Best Countries to base yourself as a Tech Worker in 2024

Global outlook, specifically targeted to Europeans

By "tech worker", I mean anyone working in software or online. Some examples:

• Software engineers working full-time for a company

• Software freelancers

• Online business owners

• Digital nomads

Some of the things I've evaluated for this research are:

• Living standards

• Taxation

• Access to high-income or wealth generating opportunities

• Lifestyle preferences

• Safety and country stability

• Fun factor

• Family factor (is it a good place to raise a family?)

• Location and ease of travel

Let’s start

UAE 🇦🇪

• Low taxes

• Good income and wealth generating opportunities

• Bad on social rights and democracy

• Good weather part of the year, terrible weather in summer

• Lifestyle and fun opportunities seem a bit tasteless from a Euro perspective

• Great airport and connections

Vote: 7/10

Germany and most other Western EU countries 🇩🇪 🇪🇺

• Mid pay

• Bad taxes

• Mid safety

• Decent lifestyle

• Decent weather

• Good social rights and welfare

• Bad economic trajectory

Vote: 6.5/10

UK 🇬🇧

• Like the above but a bit worse

Vote: 5.5/10

Southern Europe 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 🇬🇷 🇵🇹

• Great weather and lifestyle

• Decent safety

• Mid taxes and public services

• Bad to make money

• Good cost of living if working remotely

Vote: 7.5/10

France 🇫🇷

• Similar to the above but a bit worse on safety and politics and a bit better on salaries

Vote: 7+/10

Cyprus 🇨🇾

• Similar to Southern Europe but

• Better taxes

• More safety

• Smaller cities and generally less connected

• Smaller economy

Vote: 8.5/10

Poland 🇵🇱

• Growing economy

• Great financial upside for people in tech

• Good taxes

• Good lifestyle

• Proximity to Russia and associated geopolitical risks (minimal but not zero)

• Complex relationship with EU (benefits and downsides of being in the EU)

• Good cost of living (although rising)

• Good connections and airport

• In some aspects, still catching up to more developed countries and economies

Vote: 9/10

Central Europe 🇨🇿 🇷🇴 🇷🇸 🇭🇺 etc

• Similar to Poland but overall a bit worse

Vote: 8-/10

Smaller countries in Central Europe 🇲🇪 🇦🇱 🇭🇷 🇸🇰 🇸🇮

• They have a place but I haven't explored them much

• Particularly good for remote workers as local employment market is limited

Vote (from what I've seen): 8/10

Switzerland 🇨🇭

• Very high cost of living

• High lower bound on income potential (difficult to make less than 80k/year)

• Good/great opportunities to generate income and create wealth

• Good taxes

• Very high standard of living

• Great airport and connection

• Great services

• As politically stable as it gets

• Lifestyle with pros and cons, probably more suited to families

• Nerdy and not so diverse environment (mainly banking, tech and science folks)

• Country benefits a lot from its brand and this might change

• Pressure for everything and everyone to be 10/10

Vote: 9/10

Northern Europe 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇪🇪 etc

• Good standard of living

• Western part has good salaries but bad taxes and OK cost of living

• Eastern part has good taxes and cost of living but smaller salaries and more geopolitical risks

• Weather not great for most people

• OK connections

• Great nature

• Family friendly

Vote: 7.5/10

Asia

• Offers a lot of options, some of them better than others

• Far from Europe (downside for me and for ~70% of my audience)

• Living standards not always 10/10

• Growing

• Affordable

Vote: 7+/10

USA 🇺🇸

• Mixed bag, won’t expand here because I talked often about it and similarly to Asia it’s far from home for a lot of my audience.

• Check these articles to learn more: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Vote: 7+/10

Final ranking

1. Switzerland 🇨🇭 9/10

2. Poland 🇵🇱 9/10

3. Cyprus 🇨🇾 8.5/10

4. Smaller countries in Central Europe 🇲🇪 🇭🇷 🇸🇰 🇸🇮 8/10

5. Central Europe 🇨🇿 🇷🇴 🇷🇸 🇭🇺 🇦🇱 etc 8-/10

6. Southern Europe 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 🇬🇷 🇵🇹 7.5/10

7. Northern Europe 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇪🇪 etc 7.5/10

8. Asia 7+/10

9. USA 🇺🇸 7+/10

10. France 🇫🇷 7+/10

11. UAE 🇦🇪 7/10

12. Germany and most other Western EU countries 🇩🇪 🇪🇺 6.5/10

13. UK 🇬🇧 5.5/10

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Whenever you're ready, here are 2 ways I can help you:

1. EuroTopTechJobs.com: My job board with 4000+ top-paying dev jobs in Europe and a growing list of high-paying fully-remote tech companies. Includes total compensation and saving rates data.

2. My Coaching Program: Hire me to help you land a well-paid tech job in Europe, move to Switzerland, get a big tech job, go remote and optimise your taxes and lifestyle, plan the next few years of your tech careers, etc.

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Introducing a new partnership

As you might have seen, in the last year or so I’ve grown a lot of interest into the topics of remote work and taxation.

I probably need an updated version of this article, but you get the point (you can also check this or this other articles for more on the topic).

The idea is that Covid has put the remote work genie out of the bottle, and that it’s just more efficient for software to be developed in lower cost countries, with a few exceptions, and as long as companies can find quality engineers in such location (which they increasingly can).

This means that as a dev in the west, your life will get increasingly difficult in the future.

You’ll experience less demand, while having high competition because the west has a strong brand for great employment opportunities and young people keep flocking into western countries to start and grow their careers.

Don’t get me wrong: western countries continue to offer great employment opportunities and a high quality of life, as you can see from the above list as well.

But the trend is clear.

For many people (maybe 65% or more of you reading this), it would be wise to gradually transition to remote work and move to more cost effective countries (low-cost low-tax).

But here’s the issue: navigating relocations and international taxation is not easy.

I spent A LOT of time diving deep into these topics, and it’s just complex.

I learned a lot and you can learn a lot on your own as well, but these are also tricky things where you don’t want to risk making any mistake, and avoid troubles with unwanted tax bills or residence permits issues.

I looked around for companies or tools that could help here, and really couldn’t find anything that could fit the budget and situation of devs making 50k to 400k a year.

Probably several of you already know the famous Nomad Capitalist YouTube channel, but the problem is that they mostly cater 7 or 8 figures entrepreneurs, which is probably none of us :)

Also, they have such a big brand that they charge prices that are much more than they should be. I think you need to pay them at least 20-30k to help you with your relocation and taxes.

At some point I thought “maybe I’ll try, sometime in the future, to create myself a solution for this problem, just targeted to devs and remote workers”.

But then an old friend of mine reached out to me saying that they were reading my newsletter, and that they agreed with what I was saying about remote work in LCLT.

They’re a German dev who switched to freelancing in Germany, totalling a yearly comp of around 200-300k eur, and negotiated with their clients to be able to work fully remotely.

That’s when they decided they didn’t want to live in Germany anymore or pay the huge German taxes.

So they looked around and found this company that offered a service to help them reduce their taxes and move to a place they liked (in the case of this dev, it was a sunny place with a good presence of digital nomads to socialise etc).

They ended up bringing their taxes to under 7%, and are able to live in mediterranean countries in Europe, as well as spending time in South East Asia. And of course they can visit Germany for friends and family any time they want.

They’re living it up. For real.

200k+ at under 7% tax, spending time working from the poolside in Spain, Greece and Cyprus, as well as having some cool and luxurious stays in Thailand or Bali, all the while saving 130k+ per year… It’s quite the lifestyle.

Anyway, so the good thing about this company is that their prices are also very low, because they leverage a software that they built to synthesize tax laws from many countries, and offer this software in addition to some basic consulting to people with basic needs (i.e. a dev who makes 100k and wants to leave Germany, live in a sunny place and pay low tax).

The cost for this is around 1k per year (and they do all the paperwork required to open companies abroad etc). If you’re just curious, there’s also the possibility to just use the software for something like 400 eur one time payment.

Then they also offer another subscription service of around 400-500 eur/month to just hold your hand and help you out with bookkeeping, accounting, tax reporting etc.

And if you have a complex situation, they offer a high-end service for about 9k per year where they basically do something similar to what Nomad Capitalist does.

I have been in touch with them for some months now, have gone through several back and forths, and have tested their competence using their service as a client for my own situation.

I think they know what they’re doing.

It’s a young startup, so that’s to be taken into account: don’t expect to be dealing with a 40 years old international tax law office from Geneva.

They’re more scrappy. But they’re backed by investors and offer insurance if anything goes wrong in your tax situation. So I think it’s safe to use.

I don’t do partnerships or take sponsorships, as I prefer to sponsor my own products.

But since they built something that I’d like to have built myself, I think I might make an exception for them.

Anyway, if you want to learn more, here’s how you can contact them:

First of all, the company is called Heavnn.io.

I’ve asked them for a deal where my audience could get a discount on their service, so if you want to try it out, I recommend using:

• This link

• And this promocode: Nicola5

Of course, while I like what they do, I’ve met them and to some extend tried their service, I don’t hold any responsibility in case anything goes wrong with your experience using their service. So, feel free to try them out and evaluate yourself if it’s the right fit for you.

Last but not least: they can’t help you if you’re a full-time employee. They can only help if you’re working as a contractor/freelancer and can choose how to bill your clients. If you need such a job, you already know where to find it ;)

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