Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

I did the opposite and found the us much better. Pay and opportunities are infinitely better, people are friendlier, having a car is much easier and more convenient.

> Pay and opportunities are infinitely better

...if you're lucky enough to be among the privileged.

Respectfully, this is HN, and most people who are looking on this thread for advice are indeed privileged. I don't think it's an unreasonable default assumption.

What do you expect? This is HN, full of tech folks making ridiculous salaries.

Salaries are far higher in the US in any professional field - engineering, tech, medicine, law, finance... even truck driving.

True. But if we're talking software engineering, everyone posting here is probably "privileged" in that regard.

Let me just take this moment to say, holy shit what a fascinating time we all live in and what a happy accident it was that I stumbled into software engineering in this particular era.

I'm not aware of a recent time in history when you could get what amounts to a doctor's salary without the lengthy schooling, rigorous training, certification.

The first points are salient. The last point is interesting, since a car is generally much more required in the US, yes it is easier and more convenient to have a car in the US, as well as a buttload cheaper, but life without a car is (generally) a lot less easy or convenient.

> having a car is much easier and more convenient.

Ah, I see you didn’t live in Germany.

The gas prices in the USA are pretty great compared to Europe (including during this presidency).

Some countries (like Italy) charge basically the cost of petrol in taxes.

On the cons, in the USA you generally need to drive longer distances.

> ...if you're lucky enough to be among the privileged

That applies in every country

Living in America is by definition a privileged position. Largest military in the world guarantees either the country survives anything or the world undergoes nuclear Armageddon (and even then the tax man is still coming to your door).

What if you get that salary precisely because this field is free of the sort of inefficiencies and government regulation that drag on healthcare and doctors.

Some of us are outsiders who just enjoy the conversation.

> Living in America is by definition a privileged position

Low income Americans have it much worse than low income Europeans on probably every single metric you can come up with.

How much more privileged can it get than on a thread where OP is seeking to leave a stable Western first-world democracy?

I think it depends on where you live. If you live in New York, LA, Chicago, Seattle a lot of the big cities have such horrible traffic I can see the want to get rid of your car.

If you live in a place like Austin Texas and work from home, like I do. Having a car is a delight. I can go in any direction and bring my stuff I can get stuff from the store and bring it home. I've lived without a car in New York City, there's a lot of downsides to that. You don't have the freedom to just go to IKEA and get a something.

Are you suggesting having a car in Germany is easier than in the US? That seems backwards.

Really? I was under the impression that even the average person living in a poor European country (e.g. Moldova, Belarus, Kosovo) has a worse quality of life in most ways compared to, for example, someone living in a rural trailer park in Mississippi (an especially poor state) making minimum wage. What are some notable examples?

The capital owning class are gunning to eliminate these salaries. "You will own nothing and be happy" is not something they just reserve for the lower classes. The future is hard to predict but don't rule out these outrageous salaries being gone in a decade or two and the market being much more middle/lower middle class type jobs.

If you're not lucky enough to be among the privileged, moving to Europe is impossible unless you have inherited citizenship (which is itself another kind of privilege).

European Union countries*

For basic things like vacations, parental leaves, access to basic healthcare, &c.

I've seen skidrow in LA and some parts of SF and NY, this is third world country tier, it looked like war times refugees camps

That's just moving goal posts. European people are still European even if they're not EU citizens. Compare New England averages to European Union averages if you want a fair assessment - you'll find that not only are New Englanders making more money, they also have equivalent or higher quality of life than many EU countries do.

> That's just moving goal posts.

It's not, I just didn't specify it because for me it's logical, I highly doubt OP wants to move to Belarus, but yeah go ahead and pick the absolute poorest and least likely countries anyone would immigrate to when they say "Europe" and tell me about moving goal posts ...

"average", "money", yeah sure, the average american probably make more money. And yes you're right, the poorest Americans make more money than the poorest Europeans, but money isn't all. Otherwise nobody would ever complain, they'd be as happy than Norway, which is obviously not the case. https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...

If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure, but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way. I'll take min wage, job security, healthcare, free education, more vacation days, paid sick leaves, paid parental leaves, guaranteed minimum incomes, &c. If you're a min wage worker in the EU you have a much less stressful life than in the US, it's not even comparable. They're at least half a century late in term of social/workers right

I don't doubt you're right. The last three decades have been a "worker's market" for those of us lucky enough to have stumbled into a trade that Corporate desperately needed the services of.

I am doubly fortunate to be ending my career in this field. I have no idea what the future holds for those still in the field. It may well become a narrow path you need to hew to.

I would imagine there should be plenty of other fields just like it then.

Funnily enough, if you want to talk about LA and SF and NY, all of those places have free healthcare for the poorest citizens as well as paid family leave.

And there are absolutely places as bad if not worse than skid row in the European Union. e.g. Romani ghettos. Are we talking about the REALLY poor poor people, or just ordinary, say, 10th-percentile-level poverty? Are we comparing Skid Row in Los Angeles to Fakulteta in Sofia, Bulgaria? Or are we comparing poor trailer park minimum wage life in Alabama to poor rural minimum wage work in Romania?

And of course all this assumes "normal" full time salaried wage work for a large corporation, unless you want to add in seasonal labor or subsistence agriculture or running your own business or family-owned business work or unpaid internships or apprenticeships or contract work or gig economy work and whether any of those count as poor and whether it counts to say they do or don't have certain benefits under what conditions.

Also, just checking, but are we counting US territories (e.g. Puerto Rico)? That might change my opinion.

You've imagined correctly.

> I highly doubt OP wants to move to Belarus, but yeah go ahead and pick the absolute poorest and least likely countries anyone would immigrate to

If we are comparing sub-territories then, why on earth would OP want to move to Mississippi? Or LA? Or NY? If OP moved to, say, New Hampshire or Vermont, not only would they make more money but they would have some of the highest qualify of live anywhere on the planet.

> If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure

New England states have similar labor / worker rights to the EU; Massachusetts has something close to universal healthcare (although not exactly, then again every country's version is different), CT has paid family and medical leave, New York has free community college, all of New England is LGBTIA+ friendly at the legislative level, etc.

> but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way

I am Albanian and my family moved here when I was 6 months old. I am not defending America for nothing, I know what we left behind. You can claim that living in Germany, France, etc. is better but that is like saying buying a house in Beverly Hills is better than buying a house in Compton. Obviously rich countries are always going to be better to live in regardless of what treaties or unions they sign. The beauty of the United States is that you can get comparable quality of life results in certain areas while having military protection everywhere.

I had to rent a car when I went to IKEA in Switzerland. It wasn't that bad, and seemed like a pretty standard thing to do.

The US doesn't really have urban area car rentals, you'd have to get to the airport first.

That's entirely false. Where I live in North Austin there are two places to rent cars within 2 miles of me. The same is true all over the USA.