> Higher salaries aren't always better, especially when you're almost willfully ignoring more important things like purchasing power and quality of life.

Senior SWE salaries I'm finding in a quick google search in Spain are 80k eur. According to levels.fyi [1] Google (and presumably the other clouds) are paying 170k eur. The comparison isn't even "is 4x the salary better in the US?" it's "is 2x the salary better in the same place?" which is obviously yes.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...

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embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Again, by focusing solely on the salary you're missing the bigger picture. I know y'all are conditioned to just focusing on the salary, but there is so much more to life.

	▲	Nextgrid an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Tell that to my landlord who's gonna collect his rent check tomorrow? Hell I'll give you half as a reward if you can convince him to forego the rent for this month.
	▲	mgh95 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I don't think I am. Spanish employees of Google benefit just as much from Spanish employment law as Jose's Web Dev Shop. It's the purest comparison considering it's within the exact same country.
	▲	inglor_cz 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		While this sounds like great philosophical advice, in practice big salaries do attract employees regardless. If you want to solve the "brain drain to American companies" problem, ignoring the fact that they pay better isn't likely to help.

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Juliate an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

But you still won't get with 170k in the Bay Area, what you get in Paris, Madrid, Nantes or Barcelona with 80k.

In France, if you get 80k net, you do actually get ~160k, half of which is collected/distributed before by your employer to various mutualised funds (health, retirement, unemployment, state taxes, employee benefits, etc.).

And the mechanism is somewhat similar in other EU countries.

	▲	Nextgrid an hour ago \| parent [-]
		80k net is 6.6k. If you're getting 80k (which is the very upper end of the range) it's likely you are in Paris, where you're gonna give at least 2k of that on rent for a shitty damp place, and double that for something decent. Trust me I would love to quit consulting and be able to have a chill permanent job that can afford me a good flat and lifestyle. I'm still searching. Spain situation is very similar last time I ran the numbers. Definitely no fucking way I'm helping anyone build a cloud provider (a cash cow considering the margins in there) for such pay. If I want to sell my soul to the devil, the one across the pond is gonna give me twice as many bucks for it.