May I ask where in NL? Wife and I (and kids) are looking at moving to bloommerwede.nl/ in Utrecht. I want to walk out my door and not see a car.
I'm an American who moved to Ireland. The month I got stamp 4 (meaning I wasn't tied to my employer) I got a job working for an American company that hired remote (Auth0) and a 50% bump in base, and several hundred k in options (but that was luck since Okta bought us). Since then I started my own limited company and work remote for US clients. I make about 150k a year. What's crazy to me is that European companies pay just appallingly badly, while (many) American companies consider me cheap. I was on a call with a startup and they asked about pay requirement and I said "around 140k" (I shouldn't have given a number but I was pretty sure I didn't want to work there) and they were delighted. Only later did we realize they had heard me as saying "40k" and they thought my ask was utterly ludicrous.
Similarly, accelerators here offer peanuts. I looked closely (and got in to) carbon13, which looks great in many respects since I want to work addressing climate breakdown, but if you get through their phase 1 AND find a cofounder then they will invest.... eighty thousand GBP. To start a company. I could move to America and just save 80k in relatively short order, and not split with a cofounder. I don't want to live in America (every time I go back I remember why we left) but.. still.
If I talk to friends in Europe I feel awkward about how much I am paid, and if I talk to my friends back home in California I feel awkward about how little. I suppose it's valuable perspective but I _WANT_ Europe to be a strong counter to the US making amazing companies and instead they bleed talent to California. It's pathetic that Ireland's biggest business success story is the Collisons, who got the hell out as fast as they could and moved to California to start Stripe. To Stripe's credit, they're one of the only companies in Dublin with not-terrible pay.
I'm an American who moved to Ireland. The month I got stamp 4 (meaning I wasn't tied to my employer) I got a job working for an American company that hired remote (Auth0) and a 50% bump in base, and several hundred k in options (but that was luck since Okta bought us). Since then I started my own limited company and work remote for US clients. I make about 150k a year. What's crazy to me is that European companies pay just appallingly badly, while (many) American companies consider me cheap. I was on a call with a startup and they asked about pay requirement and I said "around 140k" (I shouldn't have given a number but I was pretty sure I didn't want to work there) and they were delighted. Only later did we realize they had heard me as saying "40k" and they thought my ask was utterly ludicrous.
Similarly, accelerators here offer peanuts. I looked closely (and got in to) carbon13, which looks great in many respects since I want to work addressing climate breakdown, but if you get through their phase 1 AND find a cofounder then they will invest.... eighty thousand GBP. To start a company. I could move to America and just save 80k in relatively short order, and not split with a cofounder. I don't want to live in America (every time I go back I remember why we left) but.. still.
If I talk to friends in Europe I feel awkward about how much I am paid, and if I talk to my friends back home in California I feel awkward about how little. I suppose it's valuable perspective but I _WANT_ Europe to be a strong counter to the US making amazing companies and instead they bleed talent to California. It's pathetic that Ireland's biggest business success story is the Collisons, who got the hell out as fast as they could and moved to California to start Stripe. To Stripe's credit, they're one of the only companies in Dublin with not-terrible pay.
I'm sure you've seen https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... (there are in fact decent paying jobs in NL) but also https://techpays.eu/ is good for weeding out the cheapskates.