Looking to make a move to EU (US -> Amsterdam/Berlin)
I'm a US citizen looking to make a move to EU for a year or few, just to get some life experience while I'm still young (25). I've done some solo travel for months at a time but would like to get some perspective on what it's like living in another country. What kind of salaries should I be expecting for someone with almost 2 years of fullstack experience working with mostly Django/AngularJS? I interview soft skills and take home assignments w/follow-up discussions well but am mediocre when it comes to leetcode type questions. I've been mostly looking at job posts on LinkedIn - is there a better avenue for this? Will COL be an issue for the salary I'll be making? Will I need to get roommates for a downtown /central apartment? How relaxed is work culture for a typical startup?
Average is around 45k EUR for your description in those countries. COL is relatively high, so don’t expect to save, specially in a nice city where you will spend money enjoying life. Work culture is normal, nothing special. Work ethics is definitely different than the US, people will mostly do their fixed number of hours.
Can I really only expect 45k? With high CoL, I'd figure around 800-1k for rent with roommates in a central area. I was really hoping I for something like 60k-65k. Not sure how Europeans afford anything with such low salary and a cost of living as high as where I am in Los Angeles where I reach 115k TC.
1 BR apartment (no roommates) in Berlin will cost around 1.4k in a nice area. I used to make 60k as a senior engineer in a good company, so don’t expect much. Don’t forget the 50% income tax. Life is good if you are young, honestly, but really hard to save or grow (this applies to most Europe these days unfortunately). Also I personally don’t like the culture and weather, so I enjoy the US much more. (I’m form a Latin European country).
Amsterdam is not cheap COL, Berlin may be a little better but both will have higher taxes compared to the US. There is also the problem of getting a European company to sponsor your work Visa. Unless you've got some very in demand skills or perhaps executive level, they won't goi through the extra effort & cost of bringing in a foreign worker if they cabn hire a local instead (who would also be fluent in the local language). What may be an easier path is getting on with a company in the US that has EU offices and eventually transfer over for an EU assignment...
Getting work visa in NL is super easy though, every tech company in Amsterdam is staffed 80% with immigrants.
My co-worker works out of our Czech Republic office, from what he told me, he's getting around 75% of my salary when converted to USD. We're at same level and I'm from Austin.
For 75% of a US salary I'd move to the Czech Republic tomorrow. You could live like a king on that, _and_ get to experience Czech culture! I'm assuming he's in Prague or Brno or some other major city?
Yeah, I highly doubt that. Unless trend micro makes peanuts.