> Last I saw job offers for mistral (engineering, Paris) it advertised 90k euros base salary. Not sure how they’re intending to compete with the US when even a top AI lab can’t afford to be competitive :-/

Does the US position come with 5 weeks paid vacation? When the US position gets hit with layoffs, do you still have comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage?

Yes, EU software Eng salaries are a lot lower than their US equivalents, but quite a lot of folks are happy having a top 5% salary in their own county, without all the stresses and risks of working in the US.

As a concrete example, a few years back it leaked that Dan Abramov's (very decent) London salary was half what his US peers earned. Didn't seem to bother the man much at all...

> quite a lot of folks are happy having a top 5% salary in their own county, without all the stresses and risks of working in the US.

Yes, absolutely, the problem is these are not the people you want to hire.

And the people you do want to hire are either already in US or work for a US company remotely for 3x the salary.

> Does the US position come with 5 weeks paid vacation? When the US position gets hit with layoffs, do you still have comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage?

Work a US job for 4 months, quit, take the next 8 months for holiday/vacation, and you still save more money than a European SWE.

Hey, the 2010s are calling, they want the trope “BuT eUrOpE hAs pAiD lEaVe” back.

Europe in 2026 (France, Germany, UK, Estonia, etc). What a joke. Nobody in the world respects them.

At least the US has jobs and a military. Not as good as before, but better than Europe.