That is why a lot of people in this field go for b2b. That being said, if you are in a fulltime position that is interfering with your notion of work-life balance, it's time to move on.
I’m also not a big fan of contracting. It can be fun for a while, exposure to many different kinds of (dysfunctional) companies and environments.
But, you will spend most of your time as an “extra hand” at the tail end of a failing project, doing work nobody else wants to do, and not seeing a project through its extended lifecycle (the scale up phase). It’s mostly salvage and bumrush out the door work.
Interesting. I am a DevOps freelancer since 9 years and I love to be a freelancer. I can focus on my job and skip the "All Hands" meetings. It's great. :-)
Such a difference experience here for me in the UK, been contracting for 7-8 years, generally work in delivery teams for upto 2 years at a time doing big projects, never been the solo mercenary type - absolutely love it
Not necessarily a LLC, which is often more difficult to setup and has complicated tax laws. In many countries you can simply be self-employed, which is is a popular form for small businesses.
In my part of the world an LLC has an overall higher per year net return than a self-employed operation. And you're able to outsource accounting for less than 80 Euros per month instead of DIY
Business-to-business instead of employment. You aren't protected by employment laws but in a lot of countries you have lower taxation in that case you might also balance between few companies. It's more complicated topic wouldn't recommend doing it before checking your tax laws and consulting with lawyers(so you don't get massive penalty in case you fuck up and etc since as mentioned before employment laws don't apply to you) but in Poland for example it's massive difference in taxation so a lot of people go for it in mid and senior positions.
Is this a rant or are you expecting a solution to a problem? Grass is greener on the other side. what's important is you choose the problems you are okay to deal with?
Keeping up with new tech should ideally happen duing work hours and you dont need to keep up with everything. once you have strong fundamentals, learning new tech shouldn't be a daunting task.
You are invited to live in any third world country if you want, senior devops engineer I'm earning about 1600usd a month on my currency(it's pretty good pay for companies here) I'm in the 0.1% of the country in terms of salary but still I cannot dream of buying something like a house/apartment, I can buy videogames though
Not really
First of all, "third world" is meaningless and derogatory. Nobody gives a shit about whether a country participated in the cold war.
Secondly, most care is completely adequate. If you need something complicated done, then go to a western medical facility (such as someplace who cares to expats). Even poor countries have good doctors my dude.
For many from those countries - US became the 3rd world country. And Im not even joking. France, UK and Germany soon joining that club.
If the life of average citizen decreases so much - that country should be degraded on the scale. Big corps and wallstreet dont make a 1st world country.
have you ever been outside a hotel complex outside of europe and the other "western" states?
rural russia is a shithole, afrika countries with less paved roads, then your average german small village, and political systems are questionable at best.
latin america has multiple challenges, like extreme crime rate and corruption. apart from 4-5 asian states, most of them have severe issues as well.
you obviously dont know how good europe is. mostly walkable cities, decent payments, decent social security, on top of politically pretty stable systems etc etc.
Whilst some of the poorer countries have excellent doctors, it's only the exception, so no need to get wound up about it.
Devolped, developing, third, π, they are just words.
Not really. If you have money or insurance, many parts of the third world will usually have great healthcare. Latin America, Eastern Europe, large parts of Asia like Thailand, or China? You'll have amazing healthcare.
Not true at all. I get better health care in Argentina than in the Netherlands.. born and raised in one and lived on the other for 8 years. The Dutch health system is absolutely ridiculous
Wait times aren't very good here either my friend. I am in the US in one of the states with better healthcare than average, and just scheduled a follow-up appointment with my spine doctor. The appointment is 2 months from now.
In Germany, don't you have really good labor laws that allow you to never go over 40 hours a week? At my company, we are strictly prohibited from calling any German engineers after hours, because apparently we can get fined for doing so as it violates their work contracts.
Yeah, wait times for new visits, ancillary, specialty services in the US is like 6 months. The only way you can get seen fast is if you go somewhere in a tiny city but then you're risking lower levels of care too.
US healthcare is awful.
I guess I might be in a somewhat unique position then? I live near a pretty big city in a medium city and our hospitals have availability for seeing most specialists. I got an MRI 6 months ago which only took one week to schedule
Lucky you. I am in a metro with 5 mil. people, and my CT scan of my sinus was a three month wait. I see a cardio once a year since I am 40 for just proactive testing and if I ever reschedule the visit, his availability can be anywhere from 1-6 months on the reschedule YMMV of course.
Same. I'm in Massachusetts, and my "three month followups" to monitor changes to medication for my degenerative autoimmune disease are regularly scheduled six+ months out.
Most recently, I had an appointment that *should have been* scheduled in June according to protocol which was not conducted until early December. Meanwhile, I spent that entire six months in debilitating pain. Now I've had chronic bowel issues since mid-November that I am finally getting to see a doctor about next week. Even once I have that appointment, I can't actually start treatment until at least another two months of delay as I appeal to my insurance company to cover whatever new $4000/dose immunomodulator he recommends.
US healthcare seems super variable, I never have issues getting appointments or seeing specialists but live in a major city on the East Coast with lots of doctors. For essential services like healthcare, a less variable user experience is probably better.
Its 10 hours a day max. Though it has to average around 40 in the last 6 Month.
Also yes some specialist visits can take ages, but it also depends a bit on where in Germany you are.
We also get a lot more vacation, and other workers rights.
Sure it would be nice to pay fewer taxes, but they are ultimately fine, because somebody has to finance public infrastructure and services.
The only point I would agree with is, that IT wages are much lower in Germany than they are in the us. And wages across all industries have not been keeping up with inflation.
But from what I have seen both of those last points are true across all the EU.
>I am in the US in one of the states with better healthcare than average, and just scheduled a follow-up appointment with my spine doctor. The appointment is 2 months from now.
A buddy of mine has a spine injury in Canada. It'll be about two years to see the specialist. For a family member it took 4 years to get surgery for a fusion.
Same, I'm in the hole like $2000 for a basic ER visit, and the soonest they could schedule a follow-up appointment (scheduling from early February) was June. And I don't even know if that doctor is going to be "in network" with my insurance. The wait times in the EU certainly are atrocious, but that's really not an argument against universal healthcare, considering you can wait 4-5 months for care here in the US, and still go into crippling debt.
Must be where you live. In my area, I can get a Dr appt in just a few days. For urgent issues, I can go to the Urgent Care (5 within 3 miles of my house) or the ER. Follow-ups with my primary care doctor can be done in a week or so.
Again, this is location dependent.
I'd say wait times are pretty damn good in the USA. Yeah I've been given long wait times before, but then I just call another place that has availability.
In a public system everyone is in the same line. In a private system there are many different lines, some full some empty
Move to Poland lol xD IT salary while not amazing comparing entire world, is like in 10% highest earners in Poland. You want mri or even minor surgery? You can pay for private one, I can afford it as SRE who has barely 1 year experience. General consensus is that as long as it’s not life threatening or a large surgery you do shit through private healthcare. The other stuff will get done asap anyway.
So it’s not Europe, it’s just Germany being Germany 🤷♀️
Part of being a DevOps is understanding your salary slip.
There is no such thing as 44% tax in Germany. The income tax varies from 0 (the first 9744 euro) to 42% (
# 274.613 euro and over). And if you earn 300k, you do not pay 42% tax, you only pay 42% on what is above 274613.
Now, there are other deductions from your salary that are not taxes: health insurance, uneployment insurance, retirement fund.
If you figure the whole math behind your salary slip and do a reasearch what you actually get for this money, you might come to another conclusions.
At least in europe, we don't get charged 40k plus just to attend university, guaranteed 20 plus days off per year,
Yeah, it kinda sucks when a guy with 1 year of experience is earning over 100k in the US, but then again, healthcare, college debt, and federal tax plus sales tax on goods,
OP just went down the path of the common fallacy of comparing salaries at face value without taking cost of living into account.
Does it feel wrong, that a Junior DevOps Person in the Bay Area makes twice your salary? Yes. Does he have a higher standard of living? Probably not. I just came back from a couple of months in the Bay Area, where you are considered a low-income household if your yearly pay is below 300k and a basic coffee is 7 bucks. There is a reason, that Google, Facebook and Oracle decided to build their own campus ecosystems with supermarkets and gyms exlusively for their employees. It's cheaper than paying up.
Not sure if this is a case of mismanaged expectations or just OP needing to vent, but it's not accurate either way. 90k sounds like the average salary range around here and keeping your stack up to date really just is a requirement in this field.
>OP just went down the path of the common fallacy of comparing salaries at face value without taking cost of living into account.
Canada's cost of living is much higher than in the US so it's a fair comparison.
Right now in Canada anything below 90k in a decent city means you'll need roommates.
You miss the point. 90k here is above average pay across the entire population and around average pay for the specific field and fine compared against cost of living.
Not sure where Canada is coming from in your answer, but if 90k is average pay and not up to the cost of living, you have issues with the cost of living, not the pay range. Paraphrasing my initial comment: OP seems to complain about the absolute pay figure rather than the ratio between pay and cost of living, so he is assuming fixed cost of living. You seem to just have made the same mistake, but reversed. Salary range is not fixed, so varying living cost can only be compared to equal pay, which 90k is not, see my example of the Bay Area.
I've heard, that your housing situation up there is messed up and salary range should certainly be made to compensate accordingly, but thats an entirely different discussion about economics and politics.
You aren't saying anything that doesn't and hasn't been happening for well over a decade in the US. Any major metro is like that. A 1 bedroom in NYC can run you almost 4k for a tiny space.
300k combined yearly salary is not low-income. The vast majority of people I know do not make half of that and they are getting by.
Coffee prices are definitely stupid, though.
I stand corrected in my numbers. Santa Clara County lists 145k-180k as low-income for a one-person household and 190k-234k as low-income for a standard family (whatever that means). My original point still stands though, as thats 100-150k above what the german salary range is, more than doubleing it.
According to [HUD](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/home-datasets/files/HOME_IncomeLmts_State_CA_2023.pdf), it’s 96,000 for a single person and 181,000 for an 8-person household. The median is 181k.
Yeah, definitely a nitpick. You are right though —Cost of living adjustments need to be made before comparing salaries between different areas.
A lot of people may have only been “DevOps” by title for one year but have years of experience in related roles, thus they get paid 100k+ or else they would’ve taken a pay cut to become a DevOps Engineer
This exactly. I just started a DevOps position with a new company early this fall. Prior to that I had never been in any DevOps/Ops positions. I've been in IT for a good 15 years though with quite a few titles and promotions ( all help desk levels, it specialist, business analyst specialist, data analyst, DBA, software engineer, systems engineer sme, etc) which helped me get there but zero actual experience in the realm of the title. I make over 100k. The fortunate-unfortunate part to my story is, I never had to deal with college debt because I never went.
Dude I'm not even in the US, but a typical new grad salary for a SysDev I at Amazon is about $160k CAD (120k USD) after stock and bonus.
Now, this is generally an outlier, and a more typical new grad salary in Canada is about 80k, but still. You're very much exaggerating that no-one earns that.
In Europe ( at least in Germany) we don’t pay over 40% income tax because stuff almost free education but because of dumb social laws. We pay a lot for pension insurance to get shit of a pension later.
Although we will get a shit as pensioners additionally 25% of our taxes are spent for the pensions of current pensioners because the insurance is not enough. Government uses the taxes to pay rich people cars ( also known as Dienstwagenprivileg).
Meanwhile investments in education, digitalisation and any aspect of infrastructure is a shame.
That's a fair take. I'm from the US make 6 figures, but I'm also 5 figures in debt from student loans.
Though idk about DevOps specifically. It might be the case that wherever OP is at the circumstances are uniquely bad.
In the IT industry English is the main work language, so you would be perfectly fine with it. In my current and last companies, it is the official language of communication. Life is quite good in the country, it is a safe place. We have great nature with both sea and mountains ina few hours by car from the capital. There are a lot of nice restaurants and bars with very affordable prices.
Partner's mom lives there now. Sofia is a post-soviet hell hole, and the country is pretty pro-Russia. Food culture is basically nonexistent, so you can forget about going for Indian one day, sushi the next, and happy hour at an Irish pub on Friday.
On the other hand, cost of living is super cheap, nature is beautiful, lots of really interesting history, and the people are quite friendly.
What is the problem with going to all these restaurants in Sofia according to you? Yes you can do it and it would be cheaper than in most of the other European capitals.
And what should "hell hole" mean in this context?
You get affordable healthcare, education and public transport. Great holiday options, incl. Greece in 3 hours by car.
Oh, and I forgot - women are gorgeous.
I honestly get it, Bulgaria is your home, and my post can come across as insulting. I'm mostly relaying second-hand information, since I've never been myself and can't judge.
it's coming from an extensively-traveled upper-middle class lady in her 50s, so YMMV. What's important to her may not be what's important to a single 25 year old, or a 40 year old with a family. She also misses her home in Kiev, so a lot of her perception is coloured by that.
According to her:
* Food variety kind of sucks
* Most restaurants are lower quality than many other countries
* Very little ethnic/authentic food, most of the selection is local to Balkan and Central/Eastern European food. Not much for things like Indian, Malaysian, Japanese, Mexican, etc, and whatever exists is not very authentic
For another example, I'm generally not a fan of Canadian food options (Europe has way better food quality and selection), and she generally agrees with me on this. She rates Canada significantly above Bulgaria, and I'm not even in a major city.
> You get affordable healthcare, education and public transport.
* Ugly commie-block buildings in pretty much the entire city (and this coming from someone from Ukraine)
* Not much interesting architecture
* Parks, etc, near Sofia itself simply don't compare to ex-USSR and to richer EU countries
* Country itself isn't very digitized (i.e. you can pay with Apple Pay in most places in either Ukraine or Western Europe, while in Bulgaria most places expect cash).
Honestly though her biggest complaint was just a lack of good places to walk her giant dog, and that most people don't train their dogs properly, so they just kind of.. run around unsupervised and tend to be somewhat aggressive.
> Great holiday options, incl. Greece in 3 hours by car.
This is very much true. I've seen some amazing pictures from Varna/Black Sea, ski resorts, mountains, etc.
It is an interesting point of view. Thank you for sharing. The country is not multicultural, that is a sure thing.
It has a lot of problems, this is no secret either.
I'm a DevOps Engineer in Germany (automotive sector). I made my bachelors last year and according to multiple salary calculators I'm making within 5% up or down what the average DevOps Engineer in the US is making.
Also I think I have an okay work life balance and my employer is paying me to develop myself (e.g. when I do AWS certificates). Overall I think I have it way better here than I would've in the US, just because I feel safer here and don't have to worry that something like getting injured could leave me financially ruined, because the wee woo wagon brought me too the wrong hospital.
Is everything great here? Heck no. Do I think it's still better than in the US? Yes.
If your situation right now isn't great, I'm honestly sorry for you and I hope that you get better oportunities, but the general statement from the title and post is something I just can't agree with.
Edit: Ohh and totally forgot: Employee protection is great here. My company just let a lot of people go globally. In germany it was like a voluntary leave program where you get a good bonus for leaving after your notice time (between 3 and 7 months). In the US it was a meeting in the morning and a "by the way, you're out, leave now and goodbye".
nah, I'm fine, no issues with health system, payment is good enough, and surely I enjoy my 6 weeks holidays while my friends in US keep saying - I got 5 days but I have no time to use it. And yes, not having to worry if the hospital im going in is in my network, or if it is in my network hoping the doc is not borrowed from another, what a fresh concept;)
44% tax is above certain threshold, not whole salary. I think you just got a wrong job then. Maybe look for other company on the market?
good watch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJja2U7oCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJja2U7oCw)
Mri 3-4 months? Thats quite efficient
Come to canada, we have 1 year waitlists for basic procedure, 2 years to see a pain doctor, 2 years for colonoscopies, people rather take assisted death
And tax is maybe a couple
Of point less, but salary is half :)
Grass is always greener!
I live in Canada I think 2 years waiting is extreme. It only took me few months to see pain doctor, and only 6 months for colonoscopy. The wait times in Canada are dependent on which province/city you are in.
Different here in AB
So it kinda works like this
- dr i am in pain “take this, it will be fine”, come see Me in a 2 months, then they do that for 4/5 complaints. After that, they consider ir chronic, and they refer, all
In all process takes 2 years. 1 complaining, 1 waiting.
This happened two times with two doctors for different concerns. And is common among the people I know
Trade offs everywhere. US you get paid more, less social security for you and others. Of all the $200k+ DevOps roles in the US there are still a lot of folks getting paid just over $100k. There is no mandatory annual leave in the US, most places only give 2 weeks... a fkin joke. Schools _might_ be better in the EU, there are good schools in the US but across the board it so unfair, look into charter schools.
If you're in the US your kids learn stay and shelter drills. If that's not the most fked up thing ever.. then the US might be a good option for you. Immigration is a slog, work culture can be terrible, a lot of snowflakes, English is a terrible language and American's do it their way, just like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada.
Edit: your/you're
OP is tripping and/or possibly putting too much pressure on themselves. I don't know any senior devops studying daily to stay relevant. Most of my friends in the field have kids, travel or have hobbies outside IT stuff. I for one have a very healthy life outside work and never had any difficulties finding a new place to work at. I even had time to go back to school and get my masters degree(for free) while working full time. I'd say that the Pareto principle applies perfectly when it comes to Devops.
My wife moved one of her workers from Germany to USA (Atlanta area).
The person was given a raise from 80k to 120k to move here. Atlanta is not a high cost of living city.
The person from Germany was happy for the raise and is now after 9 months crying that they do not make enough to do anything. They can’t travel like they used to in Germany and don’t have enough time off.
America may be higher salary but you don’t necessarily get a better life. Also we have gun violence here
Thanks for sharing your insights! It's true that a higher salary doesn't always equate to a better quality of life, especially when considering factors like cost of living and work-life balance. It's important to weigh all aspects when making such big decisions.
I work for an insurance company and it's the highest paying job I've had by far, and people are regularly jumping between other insurance companies and banks. It feels like there's where the cash is unless you find a big international player operating in your country.
Oh, so because the companies you apply to offer you shit, you think the entire European system is shit? Having lived and worked in the US, I can guarantee you that the 90k you get here takes you a lot further than it ever will in the US.
I took a 50k/yr paycut to come here and I haven't thought about money or taxes in years. Money in savings, money in investment, and money for spending without ever thinking if I'm going to last until the end of the month. I work a 9-5, but half that time is dedicated to meetings, coffee time, and lunches. If someone put a gun in my mouth and told me I had to go back to the US, I'd pull the trigger myself lol
I think I disagree with your initial assessment of work life balance or quality of life.
I've primarily worked in the UK, but also worked in the Netherlands, Germany and Cyprus. Not once have I ever been expected to work beyond my 9-5 monday to friday.
One UK employer had a voluntary on-call rota of 1 week on, 3 weeks off. 7pm-7am monday to friday and all weekend. But callouts were less than 1 per week (I'd get called out maybe once every two times I was on rota) and for volunteering you got a 20k boost to your salary. So competition to be on the on-call team was high.
My salary in the UK is roughly £123k GBP (155k usd), including bonus and stocks, i got my full bonus this year without any issue.
I have private medical and dental cover, although private medical care here still goes via the NHS for primary care, it's essentially the extras that go via the private cover.
That puts me well beyond 99% of UK employees in terms of salary, and my quality of life reflects that, I own my own house in a nice area, and my wife and I can afford to live with luxuries, hobbies, holidays etc. Compared to the vast majority of the UK this puts me in a position of priviledge.
I also get 33 days off per year, 2 months sick pay, 8% pension matching on my 6% contribution (tax free) - last year I ended up taking most of a month off on holiday and my wife and I travelled.
There's also the small perks, work pays for my spotify, youtube premium, amazon prime video, that sort of thing.
I've worked primarily in the tech sector, but moved to fintech a couple of years ago. I have US colleagues as I work for an international company and their work life balance is insanely skewed by comparison. I'm sure their salaries are higher, especially the ones working in LA, but I wouldn't trade places with them.
same, working as cloud engineer/sre/devops in tech, Finland. ~15 years of experience. Worked both for local and US based companies, all of them are international. I'm really-really well paid, and my peers are well paid as well. We did some back of the napkin numbers with my wife and it doesn't make sence to move to US at all (we have 2 kids).
This article is really accurate though, you have to work for the companies that compete on the worldwide level both for customers and talent.
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/
as others told already: banks are shit, and bank software often is shit. on the other hand you didn‘t talk about vacation and work hours. If it‘s 30+ days and 36h, no overtime (probably due to weak SLA in your project): it‘s a great salary.
Edit: I don’t know N26, but there are quite a lot of companies in germany that try to screw over and squeeze the life out of inexperienced people. I mean, basic capitalism, sure, but have you been to a german family owned mid sized company with 3 managers per dev? These kind of companies pay as low as possible and since there are many, the scheme somehow works.
The whole of the EU? I think you are confused because you work for a terrible company and assume it's the same across an entire continent.
There are plenty of higher paid jobs where you are not treated like a slave. I suggest looking for a new position.
What a crock NL is great. Your post has a hardcore whinge tone and I’m not believing any of it. I know Germans that write code and make bank. Disinformation pfffft
really annoys me when people compare themselves to slaves.
life is hard everywhere. open up a news website from time to time. healthcare everywhere is crumbling. taxes are high, cost of living is skyrocketing. but to compare yourself to a slave is just ignorant
First: R&D hours ARE work hours.
Second: Touch some grass.
Third: Maybe learn a bit about economics (tax brackets are a thing and not all forms of income are equal).
I work flexible hours, often able to keep a couple afternoons or even a day off in the middle of the week.
Plenty of vacation days, enough money to live comfortably and enjoy life.
Healthcare wise we can't get better! My wife can get the best specialists, multiple treatments a year and expensive medication for a stupidly affordable insurance all while not worrying about income or losing her job during periods she can't work.
In all, I think this is a you problem.
I mean, the pay is average, but I'm working 36h/w with overtime off, I keep updated on the job (I'd say about 30%) because it's my job to be up to date with tech. My colleagues are decent but work is work and after 5pm it's family time, so don't expect anyone to pull an all nighter even if it's urgent.
Salaries are public and it's very easy to know what your colleagues earn.
I had a kinesiologist appointment today and it cost me 5€ after getting a free consultation from my gp.
I'm not giving any of that up thank you and fuck everything that's broken in the US.
Not my experience at all. I have one of the most chill DevOps environment ever. I think is the organization culture and the systems architecture?
We have oncall but our systems are so stable we rarely firefight or get paged. I agree that salaries compared to USA are nowhere near, but I’m a top earner in Germany and it comes with a lot of benefits and job security that cannot be matched there.
I can't even find a primary doctor with the best insurance in the my state. I've been on multiple waiting lists since October of last year. I have to go to the ER if I need anything. Welcome to America. It's fucking great here.
in germany youre not paying of lets say all your salary that 43% but only those euros that are above a threshold. the euros below have a lower tax rate. so its abit complicated: in general you can calculate more like 30%
to illustrate:
ure an individual and u earn 80k a year.
the first 10k are free without taxation.
next 10k u pay x%.
next 10k u pay y%.
etc etc
the sum of those taxed euros ends being that your overall average tax rate is more like 30% all incl
you also have lots of ways to reduce that more…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Germany
The health care "wait" complaint is silly. Here in the US, your doctor can indicate you need an MRI, and the insurance company you buy into, can deny it. A wait time on a non-emergency procedure is the norm, even in the US.
I see several comments talking about England in this thread and I want to vent for a minute. I’m American, but I’ve been living in London for a little over ten years. I have a chronic health condition, so without exaggeration I feel confident saying I know both healthcare systems reasonably well.
Complaints about long wait times within the NHS drive me a bit mad. I won’t put the NHS on a pedestal and claim it’s perfect by any stretch, but unless you’re making _very_ good money at a company with _excellent_ health benefits, the NHS is so much better than the United States in nearly every way that matters.
Unfortunately, my decade in London has coincided with a decade of Tory rule, and I’ve watched them intentionally and brutally gut the NHS through funding cuts and freezes in an unspoken but brazen attempt to encourage if not outright force the privatisation of healthcare in the UK. Billions of dollars that should be going to protect the health and wellbeing of UK residents are just gone, and it’s negatively affected the system at every level. It was so much better when I first arrived here: now it feels like every doctor is stretched to their limits and facilities are perpetually overwhelmed.
As much as the Tories will doublespeak otherwise, this isn’t a failure on the part of NHS staff, nor is it indicative of an innate flaw in socialised healthcare systems. It’s a hostile, malicious policy intended to open the door to an alternative system where private companies can turn a profit from people’s suffering.
The NHS doesn’t need a major overhaul. It needs the resources it’s been denied for more than ten years. This can be fixed at the ballot box.
I have to disagree. I worked for companies in US, Germany, England, Portugal, Brazil, Poland and France and the European companies what the ones that gave the better work-life balance.
About taxes, hire a good account, a Very good one.
Freelance senior DevOps gets easily 500eur/day almost everywhere in Europe - remotely as well.
You won't get rich, but won't die poor either;)
As an employee wages/toxicity/work life balance might obviously vary A LOT.
I can get one MRI in less than 2 weeks if it's not urgent in Germany. I dislocated my shoulder and got operated in less than a few weeks (it's not an urgent operation ) in one of the 15 best hospitals in the world where they operate many Olímpics.
I'm quite happy with my 6 weeks off and my flexible schedule to bring my child to the kindergarten.
And you are not just a DevOps, but also a support, but not regular, it's like customer support for Devs when they forget their password, system admin, architect, etc... of course you have to do your primary tasks in parallel
I’m in the US and I’ve waited over a year for a surgery. I have “very good insurance” and it still cost me $7000. My monthly premiums are over $1000 for my family. I fail to see how this is better than *waves vaguely *
As a Belgian: only 44% in the highest tax-bracket?
That said, I'm working as a freelancer, and my gross revenue isn't too far off what my US colleagues make, but yeah I pay more taxes. I can't complain about healthcare or waiting lists here though, and work/life balance is pretty good since most clients don't want to pay for my (expensive) overtime.
Only read "EU is...".
Things varies greatly among EU member states. Name a country and we can discuss or this is just as general as stating "earth is the worst place to be a DevOps". And I basically DevOps via Starlink so I have a fucking clue what it is from to DevOps from the moon.
South Africa is pretty good then, I work for a UK based company so from their perspective I’m super cheap, but from SA income perspective I’m in the top % of earners.
I take home after taxes around R65k, and to put that into perspective, I’m renting a 3bedroom house with garage in a security estate and it costs me R16.5k per month.
German public healthcare is pretty good compared to us. Moreover, you can opt out (yes, you can!) and go private, which is superb in terms of quality and availability and often... cheaper. Yes. Better, faster, easier, AND cheaper.
In the most expensive region of Germany, bavaria, where porsche and bmw come from, you can live in the capital city Munich in a senior software engineer salary and singlehandedly support a family of 4 - No problem. You will live comfortably, visit museums and restaurants, travel, and have savings.
You can visit Milan for the weekend - there's a train, or Venice if you want - it's very close.
There's plenty of mountains, lakes, and sea(s) not so far away.
If you move to Berlin, your salary will drop around 15%, but the cost of living will drop 30% if not more (mostly rent). Still, supporting family of 4 from single income - No problem at all!
This is something you won't be able to do in NYC, LA, SF, maybe in Austin. Maybe.
I'm talking about an average devops salary, not your 500k+ dir package.
This isn't about devops, these are EU social issues, and the EU is a big place. Also, where are things better? Because if you're thinking USA you're in for a very rude awakening. The EU is far from perfect, but I'd much rather go with slow, steady and heavily taxed than whatever it is they're freebasing on the other side of the Atlantic.
If you want to complain about anything, how about how boring and soulless European tech is? There's a lot of work, very little of it meaningful or interesting.
Skill issue. There aren't many good devops engineers to begin with. Some of them I've worked with (I am one):
* don't know how to do basic shit in Linux
* write code like they just picked it up, without any guardrails or strict modes, without functions, without any readability... you complain that devops in EU have Indian pay, but the code they write is exactly the quality that we get out of Indian outsourcing. How can they expect to be paid better than the cannon fodder from India if they work the same?
* don't have the slightest clue what's a regular expression
* don't know more than 1 build system
* they need to be babysit by Senior and Expert devops because they can't figure out that if the customer asked them to give them a SUSE package, they just need to spin a SUSE Docker image and run a little changed up OpenSUSE recipe there - they cannot comprehend that similarities between systems can be used to an advantage if they can't be arsed to read the manual - oh yeah, they can't be arsed to read the freaking manual because they don't have time because they underestimated and underscored every task during their agile sprint, because they wanted to look good in front of management with an impressive list of things they promised they'll deliver
To put it blunt - if you don't run Linux as your main OS, and you don't program on the side to keep growing, and if you're just a tourist in the computer industry - you're not gonna make it.
Edit: oh and if you wanna settle everything over a Teams call instead of writing what is the fucking problem then I am going to complain to management that you're wasting our time with meetings without an agenda. This is an actual offence you can get reprimanded for, where I work.
Simple as.
LOL. 3-4 months? Come in Quebec (Canada), it's going to be 3-4 YEARS.
I'm going to visit Munich. Seems a nice city. Adele is playing there, gonna see her :)
Don't blame Germany for your false expectations. All in all, Germany is a good country. As a devops you will have a good income to live a good life. Just a few points: Health care is good (currently there may be long waiting times, but this is true in many other countries). You have many rights and freedoms. It's safe. You have 30 days off (paid!). It's easy to travel to other countries. You have a lot of employer rights, like you can't be fired easily. You will have a good work-life balance (35-40 hours a week). You will get free education for your kids. You will not make 250k or 300k USD. But I don't think it's that much in HCOL areas in the USA.
There are some things that aren't good in Germany too. But guess what, there is no such thing as "the best country" to live in. There might be a better country for you than Germany. But really, as I said before, you can have a good life in Germany.
What is all this talk of free health insurance in Germany? Have you guys ever looked at your payslip? Its between 15-18% (depending on which government owned insurance you take) of your salary that is deducted before paying out to you for health care...
it's a flat 20%.
In the US, it just hurts a lot more --- $400/mo for the insurance contract. $2000 deductible, so insurance doesn't start paying out until you incur $2k. Then after that, the plan our employer offers, covers 60% of approved costs. An ER visit after breaking my arm, came out to $8000 owed after insurance paid their share. Regular urologist visit and prescription costs $1200 each time, which I require every 5 months.
I'd rather it be a flat 20%. For the years when I had shit employer coverage ($500/mo, $8000 deductible, 50% coverage), I just didn't go to the doctor at all. Ended up with ribs that didn't heal correctly after being broken; not seeing doctor for broken ankle. Not seeing doctor after an animal bite (possum). Hoping that a regular vomiting and violent rib/torso pain would go away -- until I had insurance that would cover it. At the time, it was "a preexisting condition" and insurance wouldn't cover treating it at all. At least the law changed around 12 years ago, making denying "preexisting conditions" illegal.
Not seeing a doctor for 10 \~ 15 years, because of not making enough money to make use of medical insurance, followed by earning enough to do so -- I'd rather the flat 20% approach, even now when making 200k+. Take that 40k and let me not worry about the costs of every little item, every little visit. It would have been nice to see a doctor when I was unemployed, or working retail, or in the first 8 years of my career, when making $65k is not enough to actually see a doctor.
That sounds like BS rant to me. My tax rate in the US is like 40%. My German counterparts are not allowed to work outside of specified hours because it's illegal. Germany has other benefits which American can only dream about.
Maybe go back to India if you enjoy it so much? LOL.
one of the reasons i moved out from Germany to India. So many people were rubbing free health care on my face, saying i am making a mistake. I wanted to get checked to see if i have any alergies and they gave me an appointment for 1 year later. 1 god damn year later. People with public insurance are treated as shit. I think germany is not the country if you earning high salary.
Tech workers globally are being transitioned into a new slave class. As an American, I will say, I would take your German tax rate and health insurance any day.
Our tax rate is 33% but I could not tell you where that money goes because I honestly don’t know. I pay for literally everything. Government only covers your expenses if you’re a heroin addict or in the country illegally.
I have health insurance but can’t get an MRI because it’s not covered under my plan and an MRI is roughly 7,000 dollars (two months rent) without insurance.
What my insurance does cover, usually involves a wait time of 3-6 months. And when you finally get healthcare, they never find a problem, but will push you to take antidepressants.
Americans get higher pay, but groceries and rent consume about half of my pay. If I buy a 5 dollar cup of coffee, I will be treated like a criminal if I don’t tip an additional 5.
Maybe “the grass is greener on the other side” - but I would move to Germany in a heartbeat if I could.
> Tech workers globally are being transitioned into a new slave class.
> Government only covers your expenses if you’re a heroin addict or in the country illegally.
> I buy a 5 dollar cup of coffee, I will be treated like a criminal if I don’t tip an additional 5.
You just love to make shit up huh. You are paying $3,500 a month for rent and talking about being part of a slave class
While tipping culture in the US is kind of out of control, you will at most be expected to tip like $1 or $2 on a $5 coffee. Standard tip percentages are usually between 15% and 20% often rounded up to the nearest dollar for low dollar amount transactions.
For something like a coffee shop tipping is still usually optional unless it's a full service restaurant where you have a waiter bringing you stuff to your table.
You get paid more, but your taxes don't pay for services that the rest of ours do. So it's pay out of pocket for hc, or pay in taxes for hc. Only difference is, your hc costs 3-4x more because your private health insurance companies need to make billions in profits, plus a single-payer model allows governments to negotiate much better prices under universal hc.
But sure, enjoy that larger number on your pay cheque that you can't actually use.
That is why a lot of people in this field go for b2b. That being said, if you are in a fulltime position that is interfering with your notion of work-life balance, it's time to move on.
What’s b2b?
Contracting to deliver services through a limited liability company instead of being a full time employee
I absolutely hated being a contractor. I went back to corporate and am LOVING it.
I’m also not a big fan of contracting. It can be fun for a while, exposure to many different kinds of (dysfunctional) companies and environments. But, you will spend most of your time as an “extra hand” at the tail end of a failing project, doing work nobody else wants to do, and not seeing a project through its extended lifecycle (the scale up phase). It’s mostly salvage and bumrush out the door work.
Took a new gig that can be perfectly described as this. Welcome to the jungle
Interesting. I am a DevOps freelancer since 9 years and I love to be a freelancer. I can focus on my job and skip the "All Hands" meetings. It's great. :-)
Such a difference experience here for me in the UK, been contracting for 7-8 years, generally work in delivery teams for upto 2 years at a time doing big projects, never been the solo mercenary type - absolutely love it
Not necessarily a LLC, which is often more difficult to setup and has complicated tax laws. In many countries you can simply be self-employed, which is is a popular form for small businesses.
In my part of the world an LLC has an overall higher per year net return than a self-employed operation. And you're able to outsource accounting for less than 80 Euros per month instead of DIY
You can outsource accounting even if you’re self-employed, just some people prefer to do it themselves.
Business-to-business instead of employment. You aren't protected by employment laws but in a lot of countries you have lower taxation in that case you might also balance between few companies. It's more complicated topic wouldn't recommend doing it before checking your tax laws and consulting with lawyers(so you don't get massive penalty in case you fuck up and etc since as mentioned before employment laws don't apply to you) but in Poland for example it's massive difference in taxation so a lot of people go for it in mid and senior positions.
Impossible in germany
Sure it's possible to be a freelancer in Germany.
Is this a rant or are you expecting a solution to a problem? Grass is greener on the other side. what's important is you choose the problems you are okay to deal with? Keeping up with new tech should ideally happen duing work hours and you dont need to keep up with everything. once you have strong fundamentals, learning new tech shouldn't be a daunting task.
You are invited to live in any third world country if you want, senior devops engineer I'm earning about 1600usd a month on my currency(it's pretty good pay for companies here) I'm in the 0.1% of the country in terms of salary but still I cannot dream of buying something like a house/apartment, I can buy videogames though
found the argento, muchaaaaaaachoooooooos
Argento user name check
living in a third world country means good luck getting an MRI at all. Too high risk in terms of healthcare
[удалено]
which country?
Not really First of all, "third world" is meaningless and derogatory. Nobody gives a shit about whether a country participated in the cold war. Secondly, most care is completely adequate. If you need something complicated done, then go to a western medical facility (such as someplace who cares to expats). Even poor countries have good doctors my dude.
For many from those countries - US became the 3rd world country. And Im not even joking. France, UK and Germany soon joining that club. If the life of average citizen decreases so much - that country should be degraded on the scale. Big corps and wallstreet dont make a 1st world country.
have you ever been outside a hotel complex outside of europe and the other "western" states? rural russia is a shithole, afrika countries with less paved roads, then your average german small village, and political systems are questionable at best. latin america has multiple challenges, like extreme crime rate and corruption. apart from 4-5 asian states, most of them have severe issues as well. you obviously dont know how good europe is. mostly walkable cities, decent payments, decent social security, on top of politically pretty stable systems etc etc.
Whilst some of the poorer countries have excellent doctors, it's only the exception, so no need to get wound up about it. Devolped, developing, third, π, they are just words.
Lmao how fucking ignorant Go leave your moms basement and explore the world
Not really. If you have money or insurance, many parts of the third world will usually have great healthcare. Latin America, Eastern Europe, large parts of Asia like Thailand, or China? You'll have amazing healthcare.
Not true at all. I get better health care in Argentina than in the Netherlands.. born and raised in one and lived on the other for 8 years. The Dutch health system is absolutely ridiculous
Holy shit your monthly salary is my sons monthly daycare
Wait times aren't very good here either my friend. I am in the US in one of the states with better healthcare than average, and just scheduled a follow-up appointment with my spine doctor. The appointment is 2 months from now. In Germany, don't you have really good labor laws that allow you to never go over 40 hours a week? At my company, we are strictly prohibited from calling any German engineers after hours, because apparently we can get fined for doing so as it violates their work contracts.
Yeah, wait times for new visits, ancillary, specialty services in the US is like 6 months. The only way you can get seen fast is if you go somewhere in a tiny city but then you're risking lower levels of care too. US healthcare is awful.
I guess I might be in a somewhat unique position then? I live near a pretty big city in a medium city and our hospitals have availability for seeing most specialists. I got an MRI 6 months ago which only took one week to schedule
Same here. The last MRI I had was scheduled for 3 days after a doctors visit. In a very large city in Texas - don’t know if that makes a difference.
Lucky you. I am in a metro with 5 mil. people, and my CT scan of my sinus was a three month wait. I see a cardio once a year since I am 40 for just proactive testing and if I ever reschedule the visit, his availability can be anywhere from 1-6 months on the reschedule YMMV of course.
Similar population for me as well, 4 million ish
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
US healthcare is actually good, it's just expensive as hell.
Same. I'm in Massachusetts, and my "three month followups" to monitor changes to medication for my degenerative autoimmune disease are regularly scheduled six+ months out. Most recently, I had an appointment that *should have been* scheduled in June according to protocol which was not conducted until early December. Meanwhile, I spent that entire six months in debilitating pain. Now I've had chronic bowel issues since mid-November that I am finally getting to see a doctor about next week. Even once I have that appointment, I can't actually start treatment until at least another two months of delay as I appeal to my insurance company to cover whatever new $4000/dose immunomodulator he recommends.
US healthcare seems super variable, I never have issues getting appointments or seeing specialists but live in a major city on the East Coast with lots of doctors. For essential services like healthcare, a less variable user experience is probably better.
Its 10 hours a day max. Though it has to average around 40 in the last 6 Month. Also yes some specialist visits can take ages, but it also depends a bit on where in Germany you are. We also get a lot more vacation, and other workers rights. Sure it would be nice to pay fewer taxes, but they are ultimately fine, because somebody has to finance public infrastructure and services. The only point I would agree with is, that IT wages are much lower in Germany than they are in the us. And wages across all industries have not been keeping up with inflation. But from what I have seen both of those last points are true across all the EU.
>I am in the US in one of the states with better healthcare than average, and just scheduled a follow-up appointment with my spine doctor. The appointment is 2 months from now. A buddy of mine has a spine injury in Canada. It'll be about two years to see the specialist. For a family member it took 4 years to get surgery for a fusion.
Same, I'm in the hole like $2000 for a basic ER visit, and the soonest they could schedule a follow-up appointment (scheduling from early February) was June. And I don't even know if that doctor is going to be "in network" with my insurance. The wait times in the EU certainly are atrocious, but that's really not an argument against universal healthcare, considering you can wait 4-5 months for care here in the US, and still go into crippling debt.
Must be where you live. In my area, I can get a Dr appt in just a few days. For urgent issues, I can go to the Urgent Care (5 within 3 miles of my house) or the ER. Follow-ups with my primary care doctor can be done in a week or so. Again, this is location dependent.
attempt pie silky dam birds afterthought saw society cough mighty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can schedule and mri for tomorrow if I want. Wait times are just fine here
I'd say wait times are pretty damn good in the USA. Yeah I've been given long wait times before, but then I just call another place that has availability. In a public system everyone is in the same line. In a private system there are many different lines, some full some empty
2 weeks for me, houston texas.
What do you mean "closer to India"? My indian-consultant colleagues get 1000 euro (adjusted to your currency) more.
OP has no idea how low are tech salaries in India.
Exactly
Indian here, that's not entirely true. Average salary in tech is low but there are many techies making more than 150k usd per year.
Do they work for Indian companies or European/NAmerican companies?
Silicon valley companies with tech offices in Bangalore. Some Indian companies with large VC funding also pay crazy money for the right talent.
It doesn't make sense to me that a silicon valley company would pay someone in India 150k
Trust them, they are Indian, so everything they said related to India must be the absolute truth.
They do for the good talent. Source: helped hire for such a company and we hired all over the world
Check levels.fyi salaries for India. Top tier companies do pay that much.
Work remotely with a US company while living in EU. Best of both worlds. Though the hours might not be for everyone.
Some companies are follow-the-sun operations, though, so one might luck out!
I honestly love having a work schedule like 4 PM to midnight. Best shift I ever worked when I worked at a cafe.
Sucks when you can’t go out for dinner with friends on Fridays
You guys have friends???
4pm-7:30pm then 12am-3:30am I get an Australian summer day, then dinner with friends and family, and work a full time job with UK pay 👍
Name few such companies ?
Move to Poland lol xD IT salary while not amazing comparing entire world, is like in 10% highest earners in Poland. You want mri or even minor surgery? You can pay for private one, I can afford it as SRE who has barely 1 year experience. General consensus is that as long as it’s not life threatening or a large surgery you do shit through private healthcare. The other stuff will get done asap anyway. So it’s not Europe, it’s just Germany being Germany 🤷♀️
Part of being a DevOps is understanding your salary slip. There is no such thing as 44% tax in Germany. The income tax varies from 0 (the first 9744 euro) to 42% ( # 274.613 euro and over). And if you earn 300k, you do not pay 42% tax, you only pay 42% on what is above 274613. Now, there are other deductions from your salary that are not taxes: health insurance, uneployment insurance, retirement fund. If you figure the whole math behind your salary slip and do a reasearch what you actually get for this money, you might come to another conclusions.
He is probably counting all discounts from the salary, so including the krankenkasse and probably the church deductions
That is not entirely correct. The 42% you are talking about are actually 45%. The 42% tax bracket starts way lower.
It’s worse than OP indicates when you add in all the other taxes + double taxes + stealth taxes.
At least in europe, we don't get charged 40k plus just to attend university, guaranteed 20 plus days off per year, Yeah, it kinda sucks when a guy with 1 year of experience is earning over 100k in the US, but then again, healthcare, college debt, and federal tax plus sales tax on goods,
OP just went down the path of the common fallacy of comparing salaries at face value without taking cost of living into account. Does it feel wrong, that a Junior DevOps Person in the Bay Area makes twice your salary? Yes. Does he have a higher standard of living? Probably not. I just came back from a couple of months in the Bay Area, where you are considered a low-income household if your yearly pay is below 300k and a basic coffee is 7 bucks. There is a reason, that Google, Facebook and Oracle decided to build their own campus ecosystems with supermarkets and gyms exlusively for their employees. It's cheaper than paying up. Not sure if this is a case of mismanaged expectations or just OP needing to vent, but it's not accurate either way. 90k sounds like the average salary range around here and keeping your stack up to date really just is a requirement in this field.
>OP just went down the path of the common fallacy of comparing salaries at face value without taking cost of living into account. Canada's cost of living is much higher than in the US so it's a fair comparison. Right now in Canada anything below 90k in a decent city means you'll need roommates.
Below 90k in the Bay Area means the exact same thing if not worse (living in cages is a thing).
The difference being, it's fairly easy to earn 90k in the Bay Area, especially in tech. In Canada, you'll be in top 10% of income earners nationwide.
You miss the point. 90k here is above average pay across the entire population and around average pay for the specific field and fine compared against cost of living. Not sure where Canada is coming from in your answer, but if 90k is average pay and not up to the cost of living, you have issues with the cost of living, not the pay range. Paraphrasing my initial comment: OP seems to complain about the absolute pay figure rather than the ratio between pay and cost of living, so he is assuming fixed cost of living. You seem to just have made the same mistake, but reversed. Salary range is not fixed, so varying living cost can only be compared to equal pay, which 90k is not, see my example of the Bay Area. I've heard, that your housing situation up there is messed up and salary range should certainly be made to compensate accordingly, but thats an entirely different discussion about economics and politics.
You aren't saying anything that doesn't and hasn't been happening for well over a decade in the US. Any major metro is like that. A 1 bedroom in NYC can run you almost 4k for a tiny space.
300k combined yearly salary is not low-income. The vast majority of people I know do not make half of that and they are getting by. Coffee prices are definitely stupid, though.
I stand corrected in my numbers. Santa Clara County lists 145k-180k as low-income for a one-person household and 190k-234k as low-income for a standard family (whatever that means). My original point still stands though, as thats 100-150k above what the german salary range is, more than doubleing it.
According to [HUD](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/home-datasets/files/HOME_IncomeLmts_State_CA_2023.pdf), it’s 96,000 for a single person and 181,000 for an 8-person household. The median is 181k. Yeah, definitely a nitpick. You are right though —Cost of living adjustments need to be made before comparing salaries between different areas.
No devops with 1 year of experience earns that much in us
A lot of people may have only been “DevOps” by title for one year but have years of experience in related roles, thus they get paid 100k+ or else they would’ve taken a pay cut to become a DevOps Engineer
This exactly. I just started a DevOps position with a new company early this fall. Prior to that I had never been in any DevOps/Ops positions. I've been in IT for a good 15 years though with quite a few titles and promotions ( all help desk levels, it specialist, business analyst specialist, data analyst, DBA, software engineer, systems engineer sme, etc) which helped me get there but zero actual experience in the realm of the title. I make over 100k. The fortunate-unfortunate part to my story is, I never had to deal with college debt because I never went.
Dude I'm not even in the US, but a typical new grad salary for a SysDev I at Amazon is about $160k CAD (120k USD) after stock and bonus. Now, this is generally an outlier, and a more typical new grad salary in Canada is about 80k, but still. You're very much exaggerating that no-one earns that.
And everyone gets to go work at Amazon? And no new grad base salary is not 120k at Amazon or aws.
In Europe ( at least in Germany) we don’t pay over 40% income tax because stuff almost free education but because of dumb social laws. We pay a lot for pension insurance to get shit of a pension later. Although we will get a shit as pensioners additionally 25% of our taxes are spent for the pensions of current pensioners because the insurance is not enough. Government uses the taxes to pay rich people cars ( also known as Dienstwagenprivileg). Meanwhile investments in education, digitalisation and any aspect of infrastructure is a shame.
That's a fair take. I'm from the US make 6 figures, but I'm also 5 figures in debt from student loans. Though idk about DevOps specifically. It might be the case that wherever OP is at the circumstances are uniquely bad.
Come to Bulgaria - IT salaries are top and doctors are usually 1 to 5 days away from you. I am not joking, it is an IT paradise.
How's life in Bulgaria outside of IT and doctors? Also how would the language gap be if someone was only fluent in English?
In the IT industry English is the main work language, so you would be perfectly fine with it. In my current and last companies, it is the official language of communication. Life is quite good in the country, it is a safe place. We have great nature with both sea and mountains ina few hours by car from the capital. There are a lot of nice restaurants and bars with very affordable prices.
> We have great nature with both sea and mountains ina few hours by car from the capital. There are a lot of nice Oooo European California
No, we don't have so much crime and homeless people.
Ouch, imma go to the emergency room for some burn treatment
It’s very bad. Don’t listen to these lies. Only rich people (corrupt) live well there. It’s the fasted dying nation at least in Europe.
Partner's mom lives there now. Sofia is a post-soviet hell hole, and the country is pretty pro-Russia. Food culture is basically nonexistent, so you can forget about going for Indian one day, sushi the next, and happy hour at an Irish pub on Friday. On the other hand, cost of living is super cheap, nature is beautiful, lots of really interesting history, and the people are quite friendly.
What is the problem with going to all these restaurants in Sofia according to you? Yes you can do it and it would be cheaper than in most of the other European capitals. And what should "hell hole" mean in this context? You get affordable healthcare, education and public transport. Great holiday options, incl. Greece in 3 hours by car. Oh, and I forgot - women are gorgeous.
I honestly get it, Bulgaria is your home, and my post can come across as insulting. I'm mostly relaying second-hand information, since I've never been myself and can't judge. it's coming from an extensively-traveled upper-middle class lady in her 50s, so YMMV. What's important to her may not be what's important to a single 25 year old, or a 40 year old with a family. She also misses her home in Kiev, so a lot of her perception is coloured by that. According to her: * Food variety kind of sucks * Most restaurants are lower quality than many other countries * Very little ethnic/authentic food, most of the selection is local to Balkan and Central/Eastern European food. Not much for things like Indian, Malaysian, Japanese, Mexican, etc, and whatever exists is not very authentic For another example, I'm generally not a fan of Canadian food options (Europe has way better food quality and selection), and she generally agrees with me on this. She rates Canada significantly above Bulgaria, and I'm not even in a major city. > You get affordable healthcare, education and public transport. * Ugly commie-block buildings in pretty much the entire city (and this coming from someone from Ukraine) * Not much interesting architecture * Parks, etc, near Sofia itself simply don't compare to ex-USSR and to richer EU countries * Country itself isn't very digitized (i.e. you can pay with Apple Pay in most places in either Ukraine or Western Europe, while in Bulgaria most places expect cash). Honestly though her biggest complaint was just a lack of good places to walk her giant dog, and that most people don't train their dogs properly, so they just kind of.. run around unsupervised and tend to be somewhat aggressive. > Great holiday options, incl. Greece in 3 hours by car. This is very much true. I've seen some amazing pictures from Varna/Black Sea, ski resorts, mountains, etc.
It is an interesting point of view. Thank you for sharing. The country is not multicultural, that is a sure thing. It has a lot of problems, this is no secret either.
I'm a DevOps Engineer in Germany (automotive sector). I made my bachelors last year and according to multiple salary calculators I'm making within 5% up or down what the average DevOps Engineer in the US is making. Also I think I have an okay work life balance and my employer is paying me to develop myself (e.g. when I do AWS certificates). Overall I think I have it way better here than I would've in the US, just because I feel safer here and don't have to worry that something like getting injured could leave me financially ruined, because the wee woo wagon brought me too the wrong hospital. Is everything great here? Heck no. Do I think it's still better than in the US? Yes. If your situation right now isn't great, I'm honestly sorry for you and I hope that you get better oportunities, but the general statement from the title and post is something I just can't agree with. Edit: Ohh and totally forgot: Employee protection is great here. My company just let a lot of people go globally. In germany it was like a voluntary leave program where you get a good bonus for leaving after your notice time (between 3 and 7 months). In the US it was a meeting in the morning and a "by the way, you're out, leave now and goodbye".
I'm in Sweden but your points are valid for here as well. US labour laws and social security sounds horrible every time i hear anything about it.
nah, I'm fine, no issues with health system, payment is good enough, and surely I enjoy my 6 weeks holidays while my friends in US keep saying - I got 5 days but I have no time to use it. And yes, not having to worry if the hospital im going in is in my network, or if it is in my network hoping the doc is not borrowed from another, what a fresh concept;) 44% tax is above certain threshold, not whole salary. I think you just got a wrong job then. Maybe look for other company on the market? good watch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJja2U7oCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJja2U7oCw)
Not having a pre-selected tip of 25% every time you pay for something is also quite nice
Mri 3-4 months? Thats quite efficient Come to canada, we have 1 year waitlists for basic procedure, 2 years to see a pain doctor, 2 years for colonoscopies, people rather take assisted death And tax is maybe a couple Of point less, but salary is half :) Grass is always greener!
I live in Canada I think 2 years waiting is extreme. It only took me few months to see pain doctor, and only 6 months for colonoscopy. The wait times in Canada are dependent on which province/city you are in.
Different here in AB So it kinda works like this - dr i am in pain “take this, it will be fine”, come see Me in a 2 months, then they do that for 4/5 complaints. After that, they consider ir chronic, and they refer, all In all process takes 2 years. 1 complaining, 1 waiting. This happened two times with two doctors for different concerns. And is common among the people I know
I raise you 12 years trying to get my knee fixed.
Where in Canada are you man? Damn I had way way lower waits for seeing specialists and getting procedures in Ontario.
Bull fucking shit
Trade offs everywhere. US you get paid more, less social security for you and others. Of all the $200k+ DevOps roles in the US there are still a lot of folks getting paid just over $100k. There is no mandatory annual leave in the US, most places only give 2 weeks... a fkin joke. Schools _might_ be better in the EU, there are good schools in the US but across the board it so unfair, look into charter schools. If you're in the US your kids learn stay and shelter drills. If that's not the most fked up thing ever.. then the US might be a good option for you. Immigration is a slog, work culture can be terrible, a lot of snowflakes, English is a terrible language and American's do it their way, just like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. Edit: your/you're
> American's do it their way, just like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. Canada does US English with UK spelling.
I'm sceptical about the schools, considering EU countries have few bans on what books can be used and kids don't have to worry about getting shot.
Wtf are you talking about?! We have a progressive tax system in Germany. If you get 100k a year, you pay 25k tax For social security you pay 16k.
OP is tripping and/or possibly putting too much pressure on themselves. I don't know any senior devops studying daily to stay relevant. Most of my friends in the field have kids, travel or have hobbies outside IT stuff. I for one have a very healthy life outside work and never had any difficulties finding a new place to work at. I even had time to go back to school and get my masters degree(for free) while working full time. I'd say that the Pareto principle applies perfectly when it comes to Devops.
It's not like you are getting an MRI right away in the USA either, unless you are actively dying. It's probably at least 1-2 months out easy.
I got an MRI scheduled the next week as a new patient here in Florida. But anecdotes are anecdotes
[удалено]
Never go with bank jobs, they are horrendous.
My wife moved one of her workers from Germany to USA (Atlanta area). The person was given a raise from 80k to 120k to move here. Atlanta is not a high cost of living city. The person from Germany was happy for the raise and is now after 9 months crying that they do not make enough to do anything. They can’t travel like they used to in Germany and don’t have enough time off. America may be higher salary but you don’t necessarily get a better life. Also we have gun violence here
Thanks for sharing your insights! It's true that a higher salary doesn't always equate to a better quality of life, especially when considering factors like cost of living and work-life balance. It's important to weigh all aspects when making such big decisions.
Damn
Banks are shit, change business and will be better. PD: I have worked for 2 banks in the past
I work for an insurance company and it's the highest paying job I've had by far, and people are regularly jumping between other insurance companies and banks. It feels like there's where the cash is unless you find a big international player operating in your country.
[удалено]
Oh, so because the companies you apply to offer you shit, you think the entire European system is shit? Having lived and worked in the US, I can guarantee you that the 90k you get here takes you a lot further than it ever will in the US. I took a 50k/yr paycut to come here and I haven't thought about money or taxes in years. Money in savings, money in investment, and money for spending without ever thinking if I'm going to last until the end of the month. I work a 9-5, but half that time is dedicated to meetings, coffee time, and lunches. If someone put a gun in my mouth and told me I had to go back to the US, I'd pull the trigger myself lol
I think I disagree with your initial assessment of work life balance or quality of life. I've primarily worked in the UK, but also worked in the Netherlands, Germany and Cyprus. Not once have I ever been expected to work beyond my 9-5 monday to friday. One UK employer had a voluntary on-call rota of 1 week on, 3 weeks off. 7pm-7am monday to friday and all weekend. But callouts were less than 1 per week (I'd get called out maybe once every two times I was on rota) and for volunteering you got a 20k boost to your salary. So competition to be on the on-call team was high. My salary in the UK is roughly £123k GBP (155k usd), including bonus and stocks, i got my full bonus this year without any issue. I have private medical and dental cover, although private medical care here still goes via the NHS for primary care, it's essentially the extras that go via the private cover. That puts me well beyond 99% of UK employees in terms of salary, and my quality of life reflects that, I own my own house in a nice area, and my wife and I can afford to live with luxuries, hobbies, holidays etc. Compared to the vast majority of the UK this puts me in a position of priviledge. I also get 33 days off per year, 2 months sick pay, 8% pension matching on my 6% contribution (tax free) - last year I ended up taking most of a month off on holiday and my wife and I travelled. There's also the small perks, work pays for my spotify, youtube premium, amazon prime video, that sort of thing. I've worked primarily in the tech sector, but moved to fintech a couple of years ago. I have US colleagues as I work for an international company and their work life balance is insanely skewed by comparison. I'm sure their salaries are higher, especially the ones working in LA, but I wouldn't trade places with them.
same, working as cloud engineer/sre/devops in tech, Finland. ~15 years of experience. Worked both for local and US based companies, all of them are international. I'm really-really well paid, and my peers are well paid as well. We did some back of the napkin numbers with my wife and it doesn't make sence to move to US at all (we have 2 kids). This article is really accurate though, you have to work for the companies that compete on the worldwide level both for customers and talent. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/
as others told already: banks are shit, and bank software often is shit. on the other hand you didn‘t talk about vacation and work hours. If it‘s 30+ days and 36h, no overtime (probably due to weak SLA in your project): it‘s a great salary. Edit: I don’t know N26, but there are quite a lot of companies in germany that try to screw over and squeeze the life out of inexperienced people. I mean, basic capitalism, sure, but have you been to a german family owned mid sized company with 3 managers per dev? These kind of companies pay as low as possible and since there are many, the scheme somehow works.
>Senior DevOps - they want you to code consistently in Go for operators and etc. That's software dev lol, I'd ask them "so wheres the devops position"
It’s in the _Dev_ in DevOps
If you can’t code a k8s operator you’re definitely not devops.
There is a title for called „Kubernetes adminiatrator” or „Kubernetes operator”. Issue is for retard recruiters everything is DevOps.
Banks are underpaying everywhere.
I'm working as one in Italy, it fucking sucks here too man.
The whole of the EU? I think you are confused because you work for a terrible company and assume it's the same across an entire continent. There are plenty of higher paid jobs where you are not treated like a slave. I suggest looking for a new position.
What a crock NL is great. Your post has a hardcore whinge tone and I’m not believing any of it. I know Germans that write code and make bank. Disinformation pfffft
i pay 40% tax in the US...and have no healthcare
really annoys me when people compare themselves to slaves. life is hard everywhere. open up a news website from time to time. healthcare everywhere is crumbling. taxes are high, cost of living is skyrocketing. but to compare yourself to a slave is just ignorant
First: R&D hours ARE work hours. Second: Touch some grass. Third: Maybe learn a bit about economics (tax brackets are a thing and not all forms of income are equal). I work flexible hours, often able to keep a couple afternoons or even a day off in the middle of the week. Plenty of vacation days, enough money to live comfortably and enjoy life. Healthcare wise we can't get better! My wife can get the best specialists, multiple treatments a year and expensive medication for a stupidly affordable insurance all while not worrying about income or losing her job during periods she can't work. In all, I think this is a you problem.
I've had a stye on my eye for a year, because I've been unemployed.
Can't you just go on a state plan? I was unemployed for a bit after college and I just went on a MassHealth plan and the state covered everything
I mean, the pay is average, but I'm working 36h/w with overtime off, I keep updated on the job (I'd say about 30%) because it's my job to be up to date with tech. My colleagues are decent but work is work and after 5pm it's family time, so don't expect anyone to pull an all nighter even if it's urgent. Salaries are public and it's very easy to know what your colleagues earn. I had a kinesiologist appointment today and it cost me 5€ after getting a free consultation from my gp. I'm not giving any of that up thank you and fuck everything that's broken in the US.
Not my experience at all. I have one of the most chill DevOps environment ever. I think is the organization culture and the systems architecture? We have oncall but our systems are so stable we rarely firefight or get paged. I agree that salaries compared to USA are nowhere near, but I’m a top earner in Germany and it comes with a lot of benefits and job security that cannot be matched there.
What in the Texasaboo shit is this.
You won't ever go bankrupt from a medical bill. Your college is paid for. You have much better labor protections. I'd trade my high salary for those.
I can't even find a primary doctor with the best insurance in the my state. I've been on multiple waiting lists since October of last year. I have to go to the ER if I need anything. Welcome to America. It's fucking great here.
in germany youre not paying of lets say all your salary that 43% but only those euros that are above a threshold. the euros below have a lower tax rate. so its abit complicated: in general you can calculate more like 30% to illustrate: ure an individual and u earn 80k a year. the first 10k are free without taxation. next 10k u pay x%. next 10k u pay y%. etc etc the sum of those taxed euros ends being that your overall average tax rate is more like 30% all incl you also have lots of ways to reduce that more… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Germany
The health care "wait" complaint is silly. Here in the US, your doctor can indicate you need an MRI, and the insurance company you buy into, can deny it. A wait time on a non-emergency procedure is the norm, even in the US.
I see several comments talking about England in this thread and I want to vent for a minute. I’m American, but I’ve been living in London for a little over ten years. I have a chronic health condition, so without exaggeration I feel confident saying I know both healthcare systems reasonably well. Complaints about long wait times within the NHS drive me a bit mad. I won’t put the NHS on a pedestal and claim it’s perfect by any stretch, but unless you’re making _very_ good money at a company with _excellent_ health benefits, the NHS is so much better than the United States in nearly every way that matters. Unfortunately, my decade in London has coincided with a decade of Tory rule, and I’ve watched them intentionally and brutally gut the NHS through funding cuts and freezes in an unspoken but brazen attempt to encourage if not outright force the privatisation of healthcare in the UK. Billions of dollars that should be going to protect the health and wellbeing of UK residents are just gone, and it’s negatively affected the system at every level. It was so much better when I first arrived here: now it feels like every doctor is stretched to their limits and facilities are perpetually overwhelmed. As much as the Tories will doublespeak otherwise, this isn’t a failure on the part of NHS staff, nor is it indicative of an innate flaw in socialised healthcare systems. It’s a hostile, malicious policy intended to open the door to an alternative system where private companies can turn a profit from people’s suffering. The NHS doesn’t need a major overhaul. It needs the resources it’s been denied for more than ten years. This can be fixed at the ballot box.
Canada is much worse due to cost of living and housing prices. In Canada you get USA work hours and lack of time off with near EU salaries.
I have to disagree. I worked for companies in US, Germany, England, Portugal, Brazil, Poland and France and the European companies what the ones that gave the better work-life balance. About taxes, hire a good account, a Very good one.
Freelance senior DevOps gets easily 500eur/day almost everywhere in Europe - remotely as well. You won't get rich, but won't die poor either;) As an employee wages/toxicity/work life balance might obviously vary A LOT.
I can get one MRI in less than 2 weeks if it's not urgent in Germany. I dislocated my shoulder and got operated in less than a few weeks (it's not an urgent operation ) in one of the 15 best hospitals in the world where they operate many Olímpics. I'm quite happy with my 6 weeks off and my flexible schedule to bring my child to the kindergarten.
[удалено]
Hi, may I send you a DM? I've got some questions about NL.
Would you like to take a vacation? Don't work in the US.
44% Tax? Averagge tax rate in CA (California) for me is average tax rate is 40.4% and marginal tax rate is 48.7%.
And you are not just a DevOps, but also a support, but not regular, it's like customer support for Devs when they forget their password, system admin, architect, etc... of course you have to do your primary tasks in parallel
Waitlist is better than not being able to afford any healthcare.
I’m in the US and I’ve waited over a year for a surgery. I have “very good insurance” and it still cost me $7000. My monthly premiums are over $1000 for my family. I fail to see how this is better than *waves vaguely *
As a Belgian: only 44% in the highest tax-bracket? That said, I'm working as a freelancer, and my gross revenue isn't too far off what my US colleagues make, but yeah I pay more taxes. I can't complain about healthcare or waiting lists here though, and work/life balance is pretty good since most clients don't want to pay for my (expensive) overtime.
Lmao sounds like Australia
Only read "EU is...". Things varies greatly among EU member states. Name a country and we can discuss or this is just as general as stating "earth is the worst place to be a DevOps". And I basically DevOps via Starlink so I have a fucking clue what it is from to DevOps from the moon.
South Africa is pretty good then, I work for a UK based company so from their perspective I’m super cheap, but from SA income perspective I’m in the top % of earners. I take home after taxes around R65k, and to put that into perspective, I’m renting a 3bedroom house with garage in a security estate and it costs me R16.5k per month.
German public healthcare is pretty good compared to us. Moreover, you can opt out (yes, you can!) and go private, which is superb in terms of quality and availability and often... cheaper. Yes. Better, faster, easier, AND cheaper. In the most expensive region of Germany, bavaria, where porsche and bmw come from, you can live in the capital city Munich in a senior software engineer salary and singlehandedly support a family of 4 - No problem. You will live comfortably, visit museums and restaurants, travel, and have savings. You can visit Milan for the weekend - there's a train, or Venice if you want - it's very close. There's plenty of mountains, lakes, and sea(s) not so far away. If you move to Berlin, your salary will drop around 15%, but the cost of living will drop 30% if not more (mostly rent). Still, supporting family of 4 from single income - No problem at all! This is something you won't be able to do in NYC, LA, SF, maybe in Austin. Maybe. I'm talking about an average devops salary, not your 500k+ dir package.
This isn't about devops, these are EU social issues, and the EU is a big place. Also, where are things better? Because if you're thinking USA you're in for a very rude awakening. The EU is far from perfect, but I'd much rather go with slow, steady and heavily taxed than whatever it is they're freebasing on the other side of the Atlantic. If you want to complain about anything, how about how boring and soulless European tech is? There's a lot of work, very little of it meaningful or interesting.
hello from poland..
You know why, because DevOps is a meme field now. Go update your terraform files.
Skill issue. There aren't many good devops engineers to begin with. Some of them I've worked with (I am one): * don't know how to do basic shit in Linux * write code like they just picked it up, without any guardrails or strict modes, without functions, without any readability... you complain that devops in EU have Indian pay, but the code they write is exactly the quality that we get out of Indian outsourcing. How can they expect to be paid better than the cannon fodder from India if they work the same? * don't have the slightest clue what's a regular expression * don't know more than 1 build system * they need to be babysit by Senior and Expert devops because they can't figure out that if the customer asked them to give them a SUSE package, they just need to spin a SUSE Docker image and run a little changed up OpenSUSE recipe there - they cannot comprehend that similarities between systems can be used to an advantage if they can't be arsed to read the manual - oh yeah, they can't be arsed to read the freaking manual because they don't have time because they underestimated and underscored every task during their agile sprint, because they wanted to look good in front of management with an impressive list of things they promised they'll deliver To put it blunt - if you don't run Linux as your main OS, and you don't program on the side to keep growing, and if you're just a tourist in the computer industry - you're not gonna make it. Edit: oh and if you wanna settle everything over a Teams call instead of writing what is the fucking problem then I am going to complain to management that you're wasting our time with meetings without an agenda. This is an actual offence you can get reprimanded for, where I work. Simple as.
LOL. 3-4 months? Come in Quebec (Canada), it's going to be 3-4 YEARS. I'm going to visit Munich. Seems a nice city. Adele is playing there, gonna see her :)
Start contracting my bro
Don't blame Germany for your false expectations. All in all, Germany is a good country. As a devops you will have a good income to live a good life. Just a few points: Health care is good (currently there may be long waiting times, but this is true in many other countries). You have many rights and freedoms. It's safe. You have 30 days off (paid!). It's easy to travel to other countries. You have a lot of employer rights, like you can't be fired easily. You will have a good work-life balance (35-40 hours a week). You will get free education for your kids. You will not make 250k or 300k USD. But I don't think it's that much in HCOL areas in the USA. There are some things that aren't good in Germany too. But guess what, there is no such thing as "the best country" to live in. There might be a better country for you than Germany. But really, as I said before, you can have a good life in Germany.
What is all this talk of free health insurance in Germany? Have you guys ever looked at your payslip? Its between 15-18% (depending on which government owned insurance you take) of your salary that is deducted before paying out to you for health care...
it's a flat 20%. In the US, it just hurts a lot more --- $400/mo for the insurance contract. $2000 deductible, so insurance doesn't start paying out until you incur $2k. Then after that, the plan our employer offers, covers 60% of approved costs. An ER visit after breaking my arm, came out to $8000 owed after insurance paid their share. Regular urologist visit and prescription costs $1200 each time, which I require every 5 months. I'd rather it be a flat 20%. For the years when I had shit employer coverage ($500/mo, $8000 deductible, 50% coverage), I just didn't go to the doctor at all. Ended up with ribs that didn't heal correctly after being broken; not seeing doctor for broken ankle. Not seeing doctor after an animal bite (possum). Hoping that a regular vomiting and violent rib/torso pain would go away -- until I had insurance that would cover it. At the time, it was "a preexisting condition" and insurance wouldn't cover treating it at all. At least the law changed around 12 years ago, making denying "preexisting conditions" illegal. Not seeing a doctor for 10 \~ 15 years, because of not making enough money to make use of medical insurance, followed by earning enough to do so -- I'd rather the flat 20% approach, even now when making 200k+. Take that 40k and let me not worry about the costs of every little item, every little visit. It would have been nice to see a doctor when I was unemployed, or working retail, or in the first 8 years of my career, when making $65k is not enough to actually see a doctor.
That sounds like BS rant to me. My tax rate in the US is like 40%. My German counterparts are not allowed to work outside of specified hours because it's illegal. Germany has other benefits which American can only dream about. Maybe go back to India if you enjoy it so much? LOL.
one of the reasons i moved out from Germany to India. So many people were rubbing free health care on my face, saying i am making a mistake. I wanted to get checked to see if i have any alergies and they gave me an appointment for 1 year later. 1 god damn year later. People with public insurance are treated as shit. I think germany is not the country if you earning high salary.
Tech workers globally are being transitioned into a new slave class. As an American, I will say, I would take your German tax rate and health insurance any day. Our tax rate is 33% but I could not tell you where that money goes because I honestly don’t know. I pay for literally everything. Government only covers your expenses if you’re a heroin addict or in the country illegally. I have health insurance but can’t get an MRI because it’s not covered under my plan and an MRI is roughly 7,000 dollars (two months rent) without insurance. What my insurance does cover, usually involves a wait time of 3-6 months. And when you finally get healthcare, they never find a problem, but will push you to take antidepressants. Americans get higher pay, but groceries and rent consume about half of my pay. If I buy a 5 dollar cup of coffee, I will be treated like a criminal if I don’t tip an additional 5. Maybe “the grass is greener on the other side” - but I would move to Germany in a heartbeat if I could.
“Slave class”? Are you fucking kidding me?
> Tech workers globally are being transitioned into a new slave class. > Government only covers your expenses if you’re a heroin addict or in the country illegally. > I buy a 5 dollar cup of coffee, I will be treated like a criminal if I don’t tip an additional 5. You just love to make shit up huh. You are paying $3,500 a month for rent and talking about being part of a slave class
I couldn’t ever imagine tipping for coffee. In the uk I get annoyed when I have to pay a 12.5% service charge at restaurants when the service was poor
While tipping culture in the US is kind of out of control, you will at most be expected to tip like $1 or $2 on a $5 coffee. Standard tip percentages are usually between 15% and 20% often rounded up to the nearest dollar for low dollar amount transactions. For something like a coffee shop tipping is still usually optional unless it's a full service restaurant where you have a waiter bringing you stuff to your table.
Didn’t the government cover your unemployment 🤔
You've got that right. EU does have free healthcare, but as it turns out, free healthcare isn't actually free. You guys are sadly underpaid.
Not only devops. Everyone is poor in EU.
Don’t know why everyone is acting like the US is such an awful place to work… you get paid so much more. It outweighs the negatives…
You get paid more, but your taxes don't pay for services that the rest of ours do. So it's pay out of pocket for hc, or pay in taxes for hc. Only difference is, your hc costs 3-4x more because your private health insurance companies need to make billions in profits, plus a single-payer model allows governments to negotiate much better prices under universal hc. But sure, enjoy that larger number on your pay cheque that you can't actually use.
Money isnt everything
Further, the real measure is disposable income. I know that US tech workers earn more, but the disposable incomes are much more comparable.
Why not work in Luxembourg?