I guess you're on a US salary as a contractor? There's no way I could afford more than 2 bedrooms in the city as a senior engineer, and even that's a push.
Yeah, that US viewpoint kinda irks me too. Of course Europe is cheap when you earn US tech salaries. Amsterdam is definitely not cheap on your average non-FAANG/IB local Dutch wages.
>I recall housing prices being mostly reasonable 15-20 years ago
And bitcoin was a fraction of a dollar just 10 years ago. Unfortunately, we don't have a time machine and the housing prices of today have far outpaced the earning increases that the working class saw in that time.
15-20 years ago, housing was seen mostly as a place you'd buy to live yourself, not an investment vehicle you'd buy to get grand returns from. That's the difference.
Our opinions on the cause aside, we had reasonably priced housing before, we can have it again, without fundamentally changing the way our cities are built (that's not to discount any other reasons to do so).
For FAANG, levels.fyi shows pretty competitive salaries in European cities where it has presence (Munich, Amsterdam, London, etc) — most are in six figures. Every time I put those figures in expatistan.com, I absolutely don’t get the feeling that FAANG salaries are low in Europe.
Local European IT firms (your local broadband provider, or a supermarket chain) normally pay much less though.
I’m not in Amsterdam, but my mate works in Amsterdam and lives on a single engineer Dutch salary in a beautiful 2 bed with a separate dinning/kitchen/lounge near Sarphatipark, 10 minutes walk from Museumplein, walking distance from the Rembrandt Museum and to work.
Did he buy or rent the apartment recently and from his own savings+income? Many such stories involve an old rental contract, a family-owned apartment or sizeable inheritance.
Bought from own savings and income 4 years ago with no help from parents, not a family-owned apartment or sizeable inheritance. Owner is an immigrant from a developing country, the exchange rate alone would be prohibitive for any family assistance.
IIRC the housing market in the Netherlands 4 years ago was way more accessible than the madness of today so that's probably not a surprise that he could afford it. Ask him if he could have bought in the market of today please.
Still affordable in today’s market. This shouldn’t even be up to discussion as anyone can check the available houses for sale in Amsterdam and what they sold for.
It's sort of viable, but you'd have to spend 2-3 years living in overpriced temporary sublets while trying to save up to that deposit, and still it just supports the original comment which was that you could only afford 2 bedrooms and even that is a push.
To get one of those 600k apartments you'd have to flip your first apartment for the bigger downpayment, and that's gonna take another 2 years.
We are talking about living right in the centre of Amsterdam. No one is stopping you from buying something with a much lower deposit at a cycling distance from the city centre or a much smaller deposit with a 30 minutes public transport commute for 2 years so you can then afford to live in one of the most desirable areas of a main city with a sizeable tourist industry.
That’s 2 years saving to then live where you want and then an extra 2 years to live where you want in the apartment that you want which is oversized for a single person.
Why do you need a 3 bed as a single person and what’s your ideal scenario? Do you want to be able to afford a house without a deposit, is that it?
My own company. Capitol cities are expensive; but compared with most, I still find Amsterdam reasonable. Part of the reason is that it isn’t necessary to live in Amsterdam to have the kind of lifestyle I’m describing; there are so many walkable, bikeable, transport accessible,kid-friendly and beautiful neighborhoods in this country. Open to critique; it’s a beautiful day today so I have my rose colored glasses on.
Here are the family places in Amsterdam for less than 900k. According to ABNAMRO, that’s affordable (with mortgage), if you have two incomes that gross 150k.
https://www.funda.nl/koop/gemeente-amsterdam/
In my experience, it's bullshit. The author must be conflating staff positions with "senior".
I was paid 75k as an L5 engineer at Amazon, that's like intermediate senior (two levels down from Staff). So maybe one level up you'd get 100-110k?
I've never seen salaries anywhere close to that article. Even contractors might pay $150k (and then you have to pay your own taxes, insurance, etc. out of that).
The author is spot on. You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all. Shop around, there is decent money to be made in Europe - but of course it's not as easy to walk into it as in the US today. Oh and don't forget that it's TC that matters in big public tech, not salary.
I have gone through interview rounds a few months ago at several of the companies the author mentions in the blog post and I can confirm that the range seems about right. The offers I received for their EU offices were between €120k - €170k (total comp).
But - compared to what I have heard about the US, the variance between offers is much more extreme in the EU, depending on whether these companies only compete in the local market or globally, and it is really hard to figure this out before going through the whole process. I have been surprised by a few companies that pay very competitive salaries in the US but which are barely competitive compared to some of the salaries I know from local companies here in the EU.
So yeah, it is possible to find these salaries in the EU, but they will still be considerably lower than what you can expect in the US and the bad offers are harder to weed out in the EU.
>You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all.
You know, with this statement you've just proved his point, that good tech wages in Europe are super scarce when you need to be very picky with wich FAANG you join for good compensation. That's basically skimming the cream off the cream you just skimmed. How much are you left with now, ~1% of the total tech jobs?
Amazon is worst payer among them in the US as well. Facebook and Google pay decent money in London and Zurich, almost on par with US in the latter, London is maybe ~30% less.
> How much are you left with now, ~1% of the total tech jobs?
If you want top 1% pay, you gonna have to hunt for top 1% jobs, seems obvious, no?
>If you want top 1% pay, you gonna have to hunt for top 1% jobs, seems obvious, no?
Of course, but the discussion was about the fact that the tech job market in Europe is poor. You pointing out that the top 1% devs in Europe make really good money doesn't change that since the 99% are left with sub-paar options.
To make it clearer, a better indication would be to look at median opportunities and wages in the tech sectors, and here the wages in the EU are far lower than in the US even when adjusted for the local purchasing power and real estate prices (actually, I think this makes it even worse for Europe, as stuff cost more and real estate is more expensive).
If you remove the 1%ers like FAANGS and other US unicorns pumped with VC money form the EU tech scene, you're not left with much good local grown opportunities, the wages take a massive nose-dive, which is what the majority is earning.
Anyone getting USD75k/EUR65K/GBP55K in Europe can afford to buy an apartment in any of the major cities, including London with access to a walking lifestyle.
Add a partner’s salary to the equation and you are walking your kids to school and living the dream.
To be fair for me (Swiss and self employed) the renting prices in beautiful places like Haarlem or Rotterdam appeared really tempting. Nice big apartments nearby the city for less than $1000/m are basically unheard of in Switzerland, or Austria for that matter.
No idea what locals earn there, but from a outside perspective it appeared really affordable if you ignore the high taxes :3
