> 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, including stints as a EM and CTO

> Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job…

I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but why? My understanding is American tech pays very well, especially on the executive level. I understand for some odd reason your country is against public healthcare, but surely a year of big tech money is enough to pay for decades of private health insurance?

Not parent commenter, but in the US when someone’s employment doesn’t include health insurance it’s commonly because they’re operating as a contractor for that company.

Generally you’re right, though. Working in tech, especially AI companies, would be expected to provide ample money for buying health insurance on your own. I know some people who choose not to buy their own and prefer to self-pay and hope they never need anything serious, which is obviously a risk.

A side note: The US actually does have public health care but eligibility is limited. Over one quarter of US people are on Medicaid and another 20% are on Medicare (program for older people). Private self-pay insurance is also subsidized on a sliding scale based on your income, with subsidies phasing out around $120K annual income for a family of four.

It’s not equivalent to universal public health care but it’s also different than what a lot of people (Americans included) have come to think.

As CTO I wasnt in a big tech company, it was a 50 person digital studio in the south my salary as was 275k at the highest point in my career- so I never made FAANG money

That’s 1% money. At that point the issue isn’t how much money you made but what you did with it.

Come to Europe. Salaries are (much) lower, but we can use good devs and you'll have vacation days and health care.

The tech sector in UK/EU is bad, too. And the cost of living in big cities is terrible for the salaries.

They are outsourcing just as much as US Big Tech. And never mind the slow-mo economic collapse of UK, France, and Germany.

Moving to Europe is anything but trivial. Have you looked at y'all's immigration processes recently? It can be a real bear.

Yeah. It is much harder now than it used to be. I know a couple of people who came from the US ~15 to 10 years ago and they had it easy. It was still a nightmare with banks that don’t want to deal with US citizens, though.

As Americans, getting a long-term visa or residency card is not too hard, provided you have a good job. It’s getting the job that’s become more difficult. For other nationalities, it can range from very easy to very hard.

If you don't have a university degree, most of EU/EEA immigration policy wants nothing to do with you, even if you're American or have several YoE. Source: am a self-taught US dev who has repeatedly looked into immigration to northern/western Europe over the years. If anything it continually gets more stringent every time I look. Forget looking for jobs, there's not even visa paths for most countries.

But isn't the same true for the US? To me it seems it's pretty similar both for Europeans moving to the US and Americans moving to the EU: have higher education, find a job, get a work visa...?

No clue, I don't know much about US immigration policy other than that it is, by all accounts I've heard, a nightmare. I know (from past experience) that Canada has no-degree-friendly paths, but I have no reason to expect the US (with its current set of policies especially) would be that progressive/open.

Yeah it depends on which countries you're interested in. Netherlands, Ireland, and the Scandinavian ones are on the easier side as they don't require language fluency to get (dev) jobs, and their languages aren't too hard to learn either.

Do you count Finland? I heard that Finnish is very hard to learn.

Finnish people are probably nice when people try to learn their language. Hahaha. Can't say that about the other places.

Most Scandinavians would rather speak English than listen to a foreigner try to speak their language.

Strictly speaking, Finland is nordic, not scandinavian. And their language is entirely different. I was under the impression Fins and Estonians are happy when people try to learn. Am I wrong?

Luckily a certain American to Finland HN:er has been making it slightly easier ... :^)

https://finnish.andrew-quinn.me/

... But, no, it's still a very forbidding language.

If you have a US or Japanese passport and want to try NL: https://expatlaw.nl/dutch-american-friendship-treaty aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT . It applies to freelancers.

Yeah, I'm in NL, so this is my frame of reference. Also, in many companies English is the main language, so that helps.

Interesting thanks!

I made a career out of understanding this. In Germany it’s quite feasible. The only challenge is finding affordable housing, just like elsewhere. The other challenge is the speed of the process, but some cities are getting better, including Berlin. Language is a bigger issue in the current job market though.

Counter: come to Taiwan! Anyone with a semi active GitHub can get a Gold Cars Visa. 6 months in you're eligible for national health insurance (about 30$ usd/month). Cost of living is extremely low here.

However salaries are atrocious and local jobs aren't really available to non mandarin speakers. But if you're looking to kick off your remote consulting career or bootstrap some product you wanna build, there's not really anywhere on earth that combines the quality of life with the cost of living like Taiwan does.

>However salaries are atrocious and local jobs aren't really available to non mandarin speakers.

You make such a hard bargain.

>there's not really anywhere on earth that combines the quality of life with the cost of living like Taiwan does.

Tempting, but I think the last thing I need for what little work I can grab is to create a 14 hour time zone gap.

+1, Taiwan is a great place

Thanks - my wife and I actually have a long term plan to shift to the EU

Applied to quite a few EU jobs via LinkedIn but nothing came of it- I suspected they wanted people already in EU countries

Both of us are US Citizens but we don't want to retire in the US it seems to be becoming a s*hole esp around healthcare

What's the unemployment rate like?

I'm not sure the claim "we can use good devs" is true from the perspective of European corporations. But would love to learn otherwise?

And of course: where in Europe?

Maybe one day, but your game industry isn't that much better than ours. Wouldn't want to move overseas only to still have the studio shut down.

It would be worth it mathematically to be unemployed in the US for up to 3-5 years in hopes of landing another US job.

>free Healthcare that costs 1k a month anyway

Well, which is it?

>Not to mention the higher taxes for this privilege.

Rampant tax cuts is how we got here to begin with. I don't think the EU wants someone with this mentality anyway.