I moved from CA to Europe. Don't regret it. I get a month and a half of vacation, a nice walkable city, and don't feel like I live in a dying democracy.
Two days ago my infant was sick. Made one phone call and thirty minutes later a qualified gp showed up at my apartment and made sure everything was fine. At 2 AM. For free.
In the US I could make more money but would spend it all on rent and cars (and private school tuition in a few years), and my time on commuting and explaining to colleagues that I never check email on vacation. Ever.
I'll keep what I've got. Also, lower eu salaries should make it easier to start a business if the mood strikes.
Nothing in life is "free". Europeans pay way higher taxes than Americans.
"would spend it all on rent and cars"
Excuses. If you don't want to make it work that's fine. But there are tens of thousands of people making it work in the Bay Area.
#1 Don't have a car and live in SF, or buy a used cheap Honda or Toyota.
#2 Look at Rooms on craigslist, you can easily find a room or in-law room w/ own private bathroom IN San Francisco for under $1600/mo.
All this for a <30min commute to your tech company of choice in SF.
The media and everyone else likes to talk about how expensive it is to live in SF saying it costs $4k/mo for a 1bed room apartment...except these people are cherrypicking the most expensive and nicest places to live in SF. You can easily find cheaper on craigslist.
Excuses??? Excuses are for when you've done something wrong. Why the hostility? I decided to give europe a try and liked it, so I stayed. sheesh.
Anyway I had a good time in the bay, in Berkeley. But at this stage in my life I like it here.
Also, even though I could have gotten "unlimited" time off in the US (note the huge scare quotes), my wife couldn't have, and here she gets ample holidays too.
It's hard to say. I came to europe as a technical account manager and transitioned to data engineer here (lately, shoving stuff around with redis/celery and reporting on it with redshift and superset). I doubled my income after six months here, but that was due to a new job. I'm around the 90th percentile for incomes of full time workers in my country (Ireland).
My best guess is I'd make around 50k more (usd) in the bay. Hard to say though.
I came here on a working holiday visa; check the website of your country's Irish embassy for more info. I got a bit lucky in that my old company had an office here (though I came under my own steam) but honestly got my best gig through a guy I met in a pub after overhearing a discussion about the pronunciation of JSON. That was in 2013 with a crap economy; now it's much easier. Hell, if you're decent with python (bonus if you've experience with Celery) drop me a line. Look in my profile.
Two days ago my infant was sick. Made one phone call and thirty minutes later a qualified gp showed up at my apartment and made sure everything was fine. At 2 AM. For free.
In the US I could make more money but would spend it all on rent and cars (and private school tuition in a few years), and my time on commuting and explaining to colleagues that I never check email on vacation. Ever.
I'll keep what I've got. Also, lower eu salaries should make it easier to start a business if the mood strikes.