alecco 2 days ago

The tech sector in UK/EU is bad, too. And the cost of living in big cities is terrible for the salaries.

They are outsourcing just as much as US Big Tech. And never mind the slow-mo economic collapse of UK, France, and Germany.

klardotsh 2 days ago

Moving to Europe is anything but trivial. Have you looked at y'all's immigration processes recently? It can be a real bear.

  • kergonath 2 days ago

    Yeah. It is much harder now than it used to be. I know a couple of people who came from the US ~15 to 10 years ago and they had it easy. It was still a nightmare with banks that don’t want to deal with US citizens, though.

    As Americans, getting a long-term visa or residency card is not too hard, provided you have a good job. It’s getting the job that’s become more difficult. For other nationalities, it can range from very easy to very hard.

    • klardotsh a day ago

      If you don't have a university degree, most of EU/EEA immigration policy wants nothing to do with you, even if you're American or have several YoE. Source: am a self-taught US dev who has repeatedly looked into immigration to northern/western Europe over the years. If anything it continually gets more stringent every time I look. Forget looking for jobs, there's not even visa paths for most countries.

      • trinix912 a day ago

        But isn't the same true for the US? To me it seems it's pretty similar both for Europeans moving to the US and Americans moving to the EU: have higher education, find a job, get a work visa...?

        • klardotsh 18 hours ago

          No clue, I don't know much about US immigration policy other than that it is, by all accounts I've heard, a nightmare. I know (from past experience) that Canada has no-degree-friendly paths, but I have no reason to expect the US (with its current set of policies especially) would be that progressive/open.

    • trinix912 2 days ago

      Yeah it depends on which countries you're interested in. Netherlands, Ireland, and the Scandinavian ones are on the easier side as they don't require language fluency to get (dev) jobs, and their languages aren't too hard to learn either.

      • throwaway2037 2 days ago

        Do you count Finland? I heard that Finnish is very hard to learn.

  • nothrabannosir 2 days ago

    If you have a US or Japanese passport and want to try NL: https://expatlaw.nl/dutch-american-friendship-treaty aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT . It applies to freelancers.

    • wickedsight 2 days ago

      Yeah, I'm in NL, so this is my frame of reference. Also, in many companies English is the main language, so that helps.

  • nicbou 2 days ago

    I made a career out of understanding this. In Germany it’s quite feasible. The only challenge is finding affordable housing, just like elsewhere. The other challenge is the speed of the process, but some cities are getting better, including Berlin. Language is a bigger issue in the current job market though.

  • komali2 2 days ago

    Counter: come to Taiwan! Anyone with a semi active GitHub can get a Gold Cars Visa. 6 months in you're eligible for national health insurance (about 30$ usd/month). Cost of living is extremely low here.

    However salaries are atrocious and local jobs aren't really available to non mandarin speakers. But if you're looking to kick off your remote consulting career or bootstrap some product you wanna build, there's not really anywhere on earth that combines the quality of life with the cost of living like Taiwan does.

    • johnnyanmac a day ago

      >However salaries are atrocious and local jobs aren't really available to non mandarin speakers.

      You make such a hard bargain.

      >there's not really anywhere on earth that combines the quality of life with the cost of living like Taiwan does.

      Tempting, but I think the last thing I need for what little work I can grab is to create a 14 hour time zone gap.

AIorNot 2 days ago

Thanks - my wife and I actually have a long term plan to shift to the EU

Applied to quite a few EU jobs via LinkedIn but nothing came of it- I suspected they wanted people already in EU countries

Both of us are US Citizens but we don't want to retire in the US it seems to be becoming a s*hole esp around healthcare

jimbokun 2 days ago

What's the unemployment rate like?

I'm not sure the claim "we can use good devs" is true from the perspective of European corporations. But would love to learn otherwise?

And of course: where in Europe?

johnnyanmac a day ago

Maybe one day, but your game industry isn't that much better than ours. Wouldn't want to move overseas only to still have the studio shut down.

groundzeros2015 2 days ago

It would be worth it mathematically to be unemployed in the US for up to 3-5 years in hopes of landing another US job.

0xy 2 days ago

Taking a 75% pay cut for free Healthcare that costs 1k a month anyway doesn't math. Not to mention the higher taxes for this privilege. European senior developers routinely get paid less than US junior developers.

  • johnnyanmac a day ago

    >free Healthcare that costs 1k a month anyway

    Well, which is it?

    >Not to mention the higher taxes for this privilege.

    Rampant tax cuts is how we got here to begin with. I don't think the EU wants someone with this mentality anyway.