I get 30 paid vacation days, 10 ish public holidays and my employer has to pay up to 6 weeks of sick leave a year (after that the public health insurance pays).
I make around 75k€ with a 38 hour work week and my take home is roughly 3600€ net. My living expenses are less than 1k (mid sized city, no car, split rent, no kids) so I am able to invest 2-2.5x my living expenses every a month.
Germany may be good to live and get by but not great to actually grow, financially. The whole system is still designed so that you depend on your 800€ gov check in your senior years.
Unless your parents already built some wealth it is barely possible to do so in your own lifetime in Germany.
$82k is $4.1k take home (with healthcare) as a single in Germany.
$168k is $8.8k take home as a single in Portland.
Let's say monthly expenses are $1.5k as a single in Leipzig. According to numbeo I would need $2.5k for the same standard in Portland.
So in Portland I can save $6.3k or 2.5x my expenses and in Leipzig I can save $2.6k or 1.6x my expenses.
Healthcare is included in the net pay for Leipzig, but not Portland. Employer 401k contributions and other benefits are also not considered.
Other things to consider are safety, unemployment, workers rights, tenant rights, quality of healthcare, cost of elderly care, government retirement plans, PTO, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, cost of childcare, etc.
Really comes down to what's important to you IMO.
If we compare the median numbers for Portland and Munich, cities that actually have enough entries to have percentiles on levels.fyi, then the median compensations are $164k vs. $84k. That's $8.7k vs. $4.2k take home. Looking at Numbeo, the equivalent of $2.5k in Portland would be $2.1k in Munich, so that's $6.2k savings in Portland vs. $2.1k in Munich.
To me, that seems pretty significant.
There are two other aspects that can widen the gap. First, at the higher percentiles, the compensation in the US grows much higher than in Germany. Second, US engineers have the option of getting a significant increase in compensation by moving to the Bay Area, Seattle, or NYC, whereas in the EU you can't really go much higher than in Munich.
The goal was to compare MCOL cities. Maybe Leipzig wasn't the right one for that, but Munich is one of the most expensive cities in Germany.
Munich vs SF, Seattle or NY might be a fairer comparison.
Switzerland generally has higher pay than Munich.
Also how hard is it to get a $168k dev job in Portland vs $84k in Munich? I think $84k in Munich is significantly easier.
I forgot about Switzerland. Arguably it's not EU, but it's still a place that EU citizens can easily go to.
Given that both Portland and Munich have 1000+ entries on levels.fyi and the given numbers are the calculated median, I'd say it's a fair assumption that getting the median comp in both locales would be equally hard.