Out of interest which European tech hub did you move to? Berlin? I am currently looking at making a move and would love to hear some first hand experience of the tech hubs in Europe that people have moved to.
I recommend against Berlin. My experience has been there is a low amount of talent available and most jobs are in the php WordPress legacy arena. Startups are nearly impossible due to high regulation/taxation (you'll be down right surprised), employment law, beaurocracy. There are one or two large tech companies that copy startups and actually have the money to advance them ahead of yours. Investors are therefore also hesitant for good reason, creating a cycle.
You can live for fairly cheap but eventually you'll get tired of graffiti, vagrants, and all night techno parties.
Unless you're into all of that and don't have any debts. Because you'll earn as a high level developer about 2.5-3k per month net.
I loved Berlin... Over a decade ago, when room rent was 200€ a month in a massive apartment in Prenzlauerberg. Sounds like wages are stagnating, cos I was on 2.5k net starting as a junior and when I quit a few months later they offered to bump it asking if the competition had offered more. Wouldn't live there now long term. Probably still a great place for a year.
But then again you can (theoretically) rent something good for less money, healthcare is "free" (your employers has to pay insurance), transport system is great
And it was ok-ish safe (in 2013, not sure about now)
Healthcare is definitely not "free" in Germany. In fact it is quite high compared to the UK. If you are a freelancer in Germany you will have a relatively large upfront cost compared to say freelancing in the UK.
Bring on top of that the Germany tax rates and you will quickly be taking less home than in say the UK.
Rents are also not as low as it previously was. It has steadily been rising and buying a place is also out of the question now given how the property market has performed in Berlin.
Don't get me wrong, I love Germany and have personal connections to it but one needs to take everything into account when you make a move to a new city.
For France it depends what is a cost to you. If you are salaried, some money is deducted from your salary (you do not have any influence on that). Then there is extra insurance (called mutuelle) which may also be compulsory.
Beside that healthcare is almost free. You may need to pay for some "comfort medicine" (view by the state me or less randomly) and you pay 1€ per visit to a doctor.
The serious stuff is free (actually the more serious, the more free), dental is covered by the outer insurance (the debs depends on your contact), same for glasses.
So France is good when it comes to serious illnesses, gets expensive when having children (plenty of non reinbursed sprays for nose and throat) or when you have serious dental work, especially implants.
Yes Berlin, i make close to 70k which is decent here for senior devs without management responsibility i guess and that amounts to ~3300 after taxes, health insurance etc. I could save more by getting a private health insurance, but that has its downsides too.
The main reason why this works is that Berlin is still really cheap compared to London but even compared to Hamburg or Munich. Rents are getting up though, still the amount of great food and entertainment for relatively cheap makes it easy to live with that salary.
I read an article from Buffer where they equaled 60k in Berlin to about 120k in SF or NY. I also think salaries in London are not substantially higher, while the city is so much more expensive.
I am still looking to go contracting at some point to make more money to raise a family, but for now while sharing an apartment with my girlfriend, it's decent money. Most of Berlin's working population gets far lower wages anyway, even in startups outside of development so for me as someone without an degree (yet), it always feels weird to earn substantially more than people that have a Masters in Business/Marketing.
The bad thing in Berlin is that 60-70K is really a ceiling, if you want to stay in non-managerial engineering, and that amount is not something unrealistic for engineers living in cheaper parts of the world working remotely, so there is not much incentive to move to Berlin.
Btw, why do you find London much expensive? I mean, you can rent (or mortgage) a decent apartment in the nice district for ~600 GBP per month. And the food, goods, appliances, etc... is similar, or cheaper. And most importantly - people speak English! :) The language factor was a revelation for me, after spending some time on the mainland Europe.
No way you find a nice place to live in London for £600, especially not a place of your own. If anything, you might find a room somewhere, but it's probably not going to be nice and it's likely not even going to be in London.
If you commute by long distance rail for at least an hour, an hour and a half maybe, to some small town way outside of London maybe you'll find something at that cost – but surely not in London proper.
My rents over the years in London where, per month, in order of when I lived there:
- apartment hotel studio in Limehouse: ~£2000-2500
- room in shared flat in Queensway: £1000
- 1-bed in Canary Wharf: ~£1650 (moved after a year because they wanted to back my rent by about 20%)
- studio in Angel: ~£1200
- basement studio in Highbury&Islington: ~£1350
The studio in Angel was unbelievably cheap for a brand new building in a nice neighborhood. I was the first tenant. It had one of those beds you flip down from the wall kind of thing. Sounds off putting but it was actually a really smart feature, made the place feel like a 1-bed.
Also note a lot of these would be likely £600+ since this doesn't show additional fees (estate agent, taxes etc.)
Now, this may seem like an abundance of results – but a number of these listings are actually house shares, parking lots, garages etc. Maybe you'd be ok with sharing a house (I wouldn't) but I'm sure we can all agree living in parking space is out of the question.
So maybe it's doable, but I think it'd be really hard work trying to find a place that's not kept together with shoe string and duct tape, while being in a decent area with a decent commute.
Dirt-low rents on Zoopla and Rightmove are usually baits. Call up the agency and ask them if you can see the flat. They will tell you something like “this flat has gone, but I have something similar”. Finding a flat in London usually takes a month.
It's not posh, but definitely nice, quiet and family-friendly I think. And the air seemed fresher compared to the city. Probably the rent will be bit higher, but the mortgage was ~600 (several months ago) for a nice two-bedroom apartment.
Where did you get the figure of 600 GBP to rent something decent (decent apartment + commute time) in London?
Had two friends living and working there, both left because they were spending 1000+ GBP to share houses or flats (both are married) with some other couples or people just so they could keep their commute under 30-40 minutes.
Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands also speak very good English and it's a quite nice experience to have the chance to learn a new language.
You're crazy if you think you can find an apartment for that price in London...
For £600 you can get a small room in a flatshare. Maybe a tiny studio or nice room really far from the centre. But a decent apartment in a nice district? Double that number and start from there... more realistic is 3x or 4x.
Fantastic, thank you very much for replying. It is true that Berlin is much better than London at that salary range. The average London tech job really doesn't pay enough to have as nice a life in London as you can have in Berlin for the same money.
I would be very interested to hear your view on how the contracting market is in Berlin.
There are a lot of contracting gigs and it should be easy to find stuff if you are experienced in web frontend, backend or mobile development. Hourly rates go from 45-80 EUR/h for "normal" dev work depending on your experience and can be quite a bit higher for specialized stuff like Data science/Machine Learning. Hope that helps, let me know if you have more questions.
A quick search on Stack Overflow careers shows that while there are many Berlin startups that don't pay well compared to U.S. salaries (say, 60k€ range), there are also a lot of multinationals that pay great salaries; I've seen senior dev jobs up to 130k _salary_ here. Competition seems to be heating up so I only expect salaries to rise accordingly.
What are those 130k jobs you have seen as an example? For pure dev roles, i haven't seen much above 80-90k EUR (which is still a lot of money in Berlin)
Even the one you posted has a range from 80-130k, i doubt 130k is really possible there, but interesting none the less!
Come to Sofia. No, I'm serious.
Of course Bulgaria is not the best country in Europe but it's pretty great for software devs.
Salaries for Sr. Devs are around 3000-3500 euro band -which is more than the president here- and cost of living is the half of the Berlin. Also, the city has a vibrant software scene.
Once, while living in Germany, I applied for a position in an outsourcing center of a major American IT company in Sofia. The Bulgarian HR lady repeatedly, explicitly and implicitly asked "are you sure you know what you are doing?!". Bulgaria is tough stuff mate.
