If youâre an American developer looking to move abroad, a much better plan would be to first pick up a remote gig with an American company, and then move overseas. Your take home pay will be easily triple what you can negotiate from a European company.
This site takes the opposite approach of finding positions at EU shops that will handle relocation and visas. That certainly helps get you situated, but theyâll likely expect a long term commitment. And long term, youâll leave a ton of money on the table.
I expect thatâs why the jobs listed on this site donât reveal salaries. It would kinda take the wind out of the idea if they had to tell you that none of these jobs pay more than $50k.
Ps. Still go through! Itâs really nice over here. Just make sure you get the best deal for yourself.
Please do a thorough analysis before moving abroad.
Many European countries have free healthcare, childcare and education on the other hand 1500$ might not cover the rent if you want something in the middle of the city of the expensive countries!
Taxes are widely different too.
Some of my friends lived in US when they where fresh graduates and moved back when they started having families because it was too expensive to get a relatively good education for their children among other things. I doubt all HackerNews kids will end up in MIT so compare the schools of where they are likely to end up. Check happiness levels too just for good measure.
I say this as an European that will move out of Europe to a country that fits me and my family more and that has made us happier (SF and NY at least is not for us, would like to see LA and Texas some day).
The devil, as always, is in the details, and everyone is different.
$1500 barely covers rent in most US cities too. Meanwhile, median rent in Vienna is about âŹ900, which Iâm not sure can be replicated anywhere here (maybe Pittsburgh?)
> Many European countries have free healthcare,
I wish this socialist trope would die. I have never heard of a US programming job that didn't include staff healthcare, plus some dental and eyewear.
Some US companies also include family healthcare, for some there's a fee.
How is this socialist trope?
A lot of planning involves âwhat happens if I lose my jobâ, or âmy current workplace is hell, and between that and taking care of kids I can barely even start looking for another job, and I canât afford to take a couple of months off because that would mean I need to go on the private insurance market for a few months which would be ridiculously expensive with my special needs kidâ.
Even if youâre in an ideal scenario, with a cushy job that provides great employer insurance, itâs not close to being as good as having high quality healthcare irrespective of whether you have a good job, terrible job, or no job.
I don't know all the visa rules, of course. But if you're looking to relocate, you usually needs a visa, or some sort of citizenship. Sponsoring yourself isn't always an option, or might be fairly expensive.
The easiest way to relocate is usually to find a company that can sponsor your visa application, so that you're legally staying in the country, and can enjoy all the public services.
Yeah, the visa thing is the real crux. Fortunately with a US bill rate, youâll have an extra $150k/yr to figure out a way around it.
Health insurance a lees of a concern, in practice. Catastrophic coverage is pretty cheap from places like IMG Global, and doctors here are happy to take payment directly for more routine things if youâre not on the national plan. And that payment is forty dollars because thereâs are no insurance companies to gouge, so gouging isnât something doctors do.
Personally, I got around the âpermission to liveâ thing by mildly abusing schengen tourist visas for a while, then marrying an English girl. If I had to do it again, Iâd go for one of the âshow us you have a ton of money in the bankâ visa routes. Again, that US bill rate comes in handy...
The whole visa hopping thing works, but itâs also fairly uncertain. I know quite a few people who did that in Asia, and have heard multiple stories about immigration catching on and them being refused entry.
I personally migrated by finding a company that would sponsor me, usually switching companies after that is pretty effortless.
And of course, for the rich there are âinvestmentâ visas for real estate purchase.
As regards to France (not sure how this varies from country to country, even the EU) it's fairly easy to get a visa (as in conditions), but the issue is that you'll have to renew it every year which is a fairly tedious process and has to be done in-person.
A few years back I used to have an American friend who got here on a student visa and later changed to a regular one when she started working. Granted, she wasn't in tech or anything like it, but she always had a steady long term work contract. They never wanted to give her a long-term visa for some reason. It's one of the reasons she went back to the US.
Germany has a self-employed visa with little red tape. Much better than the point-based bs of UK.
Don't be self employed abroad as a US citizen.
yeah... and even then the higher taxes can be brutal. 52% marginal rate in Ireland, (and the top income tax rate kicks in around 32k eur...)
It's also really hard to go back after five to ten years where you've made 500k+ less than your peers.
Lovely place though!
"It would kinda take the wind out of the idea if they had to tell you that none of these jobs pay more than $50k." That's around 41kâŹ. What country are you from? These numbers are certainly way off for Frankfurt and other bigger German cities. We pay around 45k⏠for a junior (!) developer and we're a pre-market startup and I know for a fact that this is a bit lower than the market standard.
Why is no one mentioning buying power as proper means to compare salaries? Also the health care stuff, rent, owning a car, retirement plans, all these things are widely different in cost and what you actually need. No one needs a car if you live in a city like Frankfurt for example. This all depends heavily on the country and region.
If you haven't thought of these things yet, you might think a bit about moving to a different country, because otherwise you'll be disappointed.
Hello, everyone! Itâs Andrew, founder of Relocate.me.
In a nutshell, Relocate.me is a one-stop platform for tech professionals who are willing to relocate for work.
Since launching Relocate.me on Hacker News over 3 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15922401), a lot has changed, and Iâm excited to finally introduce Relocate.me 3.0 with a batch of new features and enhancements:
1) Learning center (https://relocate.me/learning-center): A treasure trove of useful information and practical advice on finding employment abroad.
2) Companies (https://relocate.me/companies): A handpicked list of tech companies hiring internationally; you can filter companies by country.
3) Improved search (https://relocate.me/search)
4) Calculators (https://relocate.me/net-pay-calculators) to estimate your after-taxes paycheck in 20+ countries
5) âWho Wants to be Relocated?â initiative (https://relocate.me/wwbr): A public list of potential tech hires promoted among international recruiters.
6) Non-developer jobs with relocation assistance. Including (but not limited to) Product Manager, Design, and Marketing roles.
7) Telegram channel (https://t.me/relocateme): A quick way to keep up to date with new positions as theyâre posted, relevant news, and more.
Thank you so much for reading this far! Our team will be happy to hear your feedback.
Legit question, how many people are being relocated currently? I would have thought Corona would have really messed up your flow but I keep getting emails from you guys with jobs so I assume it's still happening.
I'd be curious as well, though I've met people in the last year who have made moves with the correct visas. Not on this platform though. It seems like the flights were the hardest part.
Iâve noticed that projects like this primarily focus on recruiting for software roles (which is understandable if they are shared here), but what are the roadblocks to listing traditional engineering roles (mechanical, electrical, etc). Lack of exposure to those industries (understandable)? Companies not offering relevant positions?
Non-software engineering disciplines tend to involve professional licensing that doesn't necessarily carry over automatically to other countries.
In my experience, the good ones do.
Medical typically does
You've already described the main roadblocks. I suppose that those industries have less in-demand vacancies comparing to software engineering, as well as companies are not offering so many positions with relocation support.
Who wants to move to Europe to make 2k a month doing electrical or mechanical engineering? Since working for a US based competitor is not feasible from Europe in these fields, the pay tends to suck.
I would assume the biggest roadblock is they actually build physical products
I know that there are state level taxes as well in the US. Can this be included in the calculator?
Also I wonder what the difference in disposable income would be given something like (typical) health insurance, food prices, and housing per state/area
Thanks a lot for the feedback on the US salary calculator! Makes sense... Added this to the backlog
Andrew, it would be interesting to hear a bit about the founding story. One question I'd like to ask is how did you acquire the customers in the early days? What was the plan for that and what actually worked?
I started a recruitment agency first... After a while, I realized that it was almost impossible to scale this business as well as to be somehow unique comparing to other recruiting firms. It took me around 3 years to negotiate buying the Relocate.me domain name and then the Relocate.me story started.
It helped a lot that I was in this field for almost 5 years before launching Relocate.me. So the first users came through the word of mouth and a Product Hunt campaign.
Moreover, we 'manually' invited software engineers to the platform, those who somehow expressed their interest in moving abroad (haha, this can help - https://relocateme.eu/blog/how-to-source-for-software-develo...)
The annual salary in the calculator goes up to $140,000 for the US. This needs to be way higher if we're talking Bay Area.
Agreed. As soon as I saw that I closed the tab, concluding the whole site isnât for people in my career/at my career stage.
Thanks for the feedback! In your opinion, what would be a realistic figure for the Bay Area?
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=google&year=2020
Median base salary at google is 149, and there are plenty of offers in the 200-400 range with outliers well above that. From personal experience 140 is on the low range for 3 years experience in the major US tech markets (Seattle, Bay, Austin)
I found this survey: https://www.builtinsf.com/salaries/dev-engineer/senior-softw...
Average for senior engineers is around $200K, upper limit towards $300K.
Why not just make it open to typing in the sum, at least optionally?
We'll think about it, many thanks!
Take a look at https://www.levels.fyi/, which has pretty accurate salaries for Bay Area companies.
Is there also 'dontrelocate.me' for my next remote tech job abroad?
Yes, I too am looking for this site.
Been looking for a country where I can seek permanent residence status (and maybe, later, citizenship) with my family without having to give up my 1099 (contractor) US remote job and find something local (no, I'm not trying to dodge taxes, and I'd fully expect to pay normal taxes on that income for wherever I ended up). Coming from the US (all of us are native-born citizens).
It's been tricky. I get why there's not some kind of policy or program in place, since that's a pretty niche circumstance, but I don't see how it wouldn't be a good thing for whichever country I'd end up in. I don't make SV-bucks but I make more than I'd easily be able to in, say, Canada, and I'd be spending that money and paying taxes in the new country (I'm not at a level of income where I'd get double-taxed by the US, though I'd have to file there). At the same time, having to job-hunt and probably take a pay cut to find a job before we even move would suck, since I already have a job I like, that's fully remote.
Anyone got any helpful info on that situation, that I may not have come across elsewhere?
If you're interested in the EU, there are treaties like the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty that allow you to get on the path towards permanent residence for a modest investment, assuming you're already self-employed.
https://expatlaw.nl/dutch-american-friendship-treaty
If I was going to move out of the US, I'd take a long hard look at that one.
Checkout the Taiwan Gold card! 4-1 visa with very few restrictions.
FYI my understanding is US citizens are exempt from US taxes as long as you spend 330 days of the year outside the US.
You still have to file a tax return, you just don't pay anything.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
If youâre making Software Engineer money, I understand that the Foreign Tax Credit (FTC) is almost always going to be better than the Foreign Earned Income Exemption (FEIE) which is hard to revoke as your income increases.
> you just don't pay anything.
(if you earn under 100k USD/yr)
Limit's higher for families. You still have to file, though.
You'll still owe Social Security. Still, a very large savings if your host country is low tax.
If you are American citizen, just be aware of FBAR and FACTA. You can reduce your US taxes, but not really, because then you have to pay local taxes. Also, your tax reporting requirements go up.
It would be nice to see more details about salaries. Its hard enough to know pay rates in your own city. I have no idea if Finland pays enough to make it worth it.
Language is a big issue too, are they all English speaking offices?
As a UK user on mobile over 30% of the viewable area is a cookie alert.
Thereâs no need for tracking cookies on the home page as shown by Githubâs recent blog post [0]
There's seemingly no way to refuse those cookies, and no way to get any relocation tips without signing up.
Good point! Thanks for sharing
Cool project! I'd be interested in relocating to Singapore, but there's only one position listed (and that position provides no relocation package info). I'm sure the slim pickings can be explained by covid, but what did offerings look like before the health crisis? Do you have snapshots or stats on how many you've assisted in relocation?
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