The European Engineer Status Update
Where do we stand
Diving deep into the financial, career and lifestyle opportunities for Software Engineers in Europe is the purpose of The European Engineer.
Analysing the market, hearing people’s stories, assessing countries and jurisdictions, looking for numbers and coming up with data-driven observations: these are some of the tools I’m using to achieve that.
Along with the many learnings I’ve gathered in my personal experience so far as a dev in Europe “trying to make it work”.
0 to 1: September 2023 to June 2024
This newsletter was born in September 2023.
Which, kind of surprisingly, makes me realise that already almost 9 months have passed.
A lot has happened.
The European Tech landscape in the last decade
The European Engineer started out as kind of a personal (at the beginning, also anonymous) blog where I would brain dump all the niche things I had learned in the process of trying to create a good tech career in a place which looked scaringly less appealing than the US.
In the past 5 years, I felt like building a great life and career as a tech worker in Europe was a very uphill battle.
On Blind, I would see people with 2 years of experience, straight out of bachelor’s, make $400k+ as a dev in companies like Amazon—which at the time were expanding like crazy, and would hire anyone who had done some LeetCode prep.
Meanwhile, in Europe, there were so much fewer big tech opportunities, and they would pay much less in most countries.
Google Switzerland seemed like the only place where it’d be possible to make it as a dev in Europe.
Getting there: hard.
Most people I’ve met working there just “stumbled” upon such a role.
After some experience working and interviewing for big tech roles in Europe, I realised how big of a role luck plays in landing GoogleZurich-like roles as dev in Europe.
Let’s all agree that this situation was/is sad.
Post-Covid Tech
I don’t know if this should make us feel better or worse, but the Tech situation in the US after Covid, started to go downhill quite significantly.
This negative event, kind of relatively made Europe, especially some part of Europe, more appealing.
Things are changing quite rapidly at this point, and most people still need to catch-up with what’s happening.
I believe most devs will start realising some of these dynamics in a few years.
The point is: the world nowadays moves very fast, and the subset of the world that is the tech world, moves even faster.
With a lack of tools, data, and guidance, it’s hard to make sense of it.
Popular believes vs facts
People a lot of times don’t make informed decisions.
They hear stories, anecdotes. Then base their lives out of that.
First Principles Thinking is hard to implement: requires research, analysis, synthesis, bias for action.
Most people shy away from it and opt for some popular believes hold in our society which are considered “safer bets”, because everyone around them find them obvious.
And it’s reassuring to them.
Some popular believes loosely based on facts:
Germany is a great place to work and live.
Switzerland is the best place to make money as a dev.
Central Europe and Eastern Europe are underdeveloped places.
Big Tech is very hard to get into.
It’s normal to pay 30%-50% income taxes when having an high income.
Devs in the US have it way better.
The list goes on.
I say “loosely based on facts” because it’s not like they’re total bs, but they’re also sometimes more slogans than anything.
Someone could challenge the above believes with:
Germany as a country and economy is going down.
Switzerland is a great place to live and work, but salaries are going down while costs stay high (and get higher).
Central and Eastern Europe have developed a lot in the last 2 decades and in most countries in this area you’ll find higher quality of life (given a good salary) than in Western Europe.
Big Tech is relatively easy to break into if you are open to a big enough variety of locations and have a system in place to prep for and land interviews.
The US has just become the most competitive market to get a good job in, given the extremely sharp raise of CS graduate, offshoring trends, high and fast-growing CoL (which makes a 100k salary in California not enough to survive), steady influx of super high skilled immigrants from Asia. All while being a place with no social security whatsoever.
Fighting slogans and popular believes with data
That’s why, my attention in the recent months has been in trying to create content that is as quantitative as possible, and trying to complement it with anecdotes from people’s stories and considerations.
As Jeff Bezos says, the goal is to gather data and then check if the anecdotes validate and contradict the data. Almost like a validation step.
For the anecdotes, I ask people around and gather their stories, some of them I’ve shared in this newsletter.
I alway look forward to expanding my network and hearing about people’s stories.
Btw, I’m preparing a few other personal stories from high-profile devs in Europe, that I’ll be sharing soon! And if you have a cool story or insights yourself, please reach out: it could help others.
For the data, I’ve created quite a few tools recently.
Recently created quantitative tools for devs in Europe
codecapitals.com helps us assess saving rates across the globe for devs in big tech.
EuroTopTechJobs allows you to access 4000+ high-paying dev jobs across seniority in all of Europe.
EuroTechMoney is aimed at gathering a large amount of data around how devs are growing wealth across Europe.
1 to ? - What’s next
What is the future of The European Engineer?
I think: much like the past, but better.
Instead of just being some considerations from a guy in tech, I would like to move things forward making it a tool/platform for people to easily analyse and navigate Tech Careers and Life in Europe.
More details coming soon, but so far, I welcome you to share your feedback so far and let me know about any pain point you currently have and things you’d like me to work on.
Conclusion
If you want it to be easier to navigate life as a tech worker in Europe, and want someone to address that problem, you need to support them.
In our world, no-one decides to go spend their time breaking their head on problems if no-one is paying them, in one form or another.
I don’t really ask much from you, but if you want me to go solve these problems, here’s some ways to support:
Share this content and create awareness. Even better, ask people to fill in their data in this salary/savings document (i.e. EuroTechMoney).
Consider becoming a paid subscriber of this newsletter (just 5 euro a month). You can do it here. This way, you’ll also keep receiving updated versions of the EuroTopTechJobs document.
If not enough people will be willing to spend 5 euro a month to “support this cause” all while getting a pretty useful job board that can save you a lot of time and help you find great jobs in Europe, then maybe this problem is not “felt” enough or people don’t trust me to solve it.
If that’s the case, I would reassess my position and evaluate if to allocate my energy and time into something else.
I don’t mean it in a bad way: I love you folks, and I am grateful for the fact that you are subscribed here and are ok receiving emails every week from your boy without considering it spam.
It’s just a good practice to “test” users before diving deeper into building something.
A provocative thought
Let me leave you with this “controversial” LinkedIn post I’ve written:
WINNING as a Software Engineer in Europe in 2024 is not:
🔴 Making 300k at Google Zurich
🔴 Paying 36% in taxes
🔴 Paying 180k/year for your family’s living costs
🔴 Having a frugal lifestyle
🔴 Saving 10k a year
🔴 Never buy property ‘cause you can’t afford it
Instead, do this 👇
✅ Find a flexible 150k freelance remote job
✅ Get taxed at 10%
✅ Find a LCOL, low-tax, great QoL place to live
✅ Spend 100k a year to live great (with family)
✅ Save 35k a year
✅ Buy a rental property every 2 years
Till next time! :)
6FEE: 6 Figures Euro Engineer Coaching Program
ALERT: Currently sold out, but you can register in the waiting list to get preferential access once new spots become available. To enter the waiting list, the process is the same as applying to enter the program (check here for the requirements).
As you probably already know, I’ve recently launched a coaching program called 6FEE: 6 Figures Euro Engineer.
It could be interesting for you if you value:
Tailored Guidance: Personalised strategies to navigate the tech markets of Europe and Switzerland, aligning with your career aspirations.
Actionable Plans: From securing prestigious roles to enhancing your lifestyle and finances, we define clear, achievable goals.
Exclusive Network Access: Connect with leading engineers and recruiters from my personal network.
Community and Support: Regular 1:1s with me and group interactions with the other members of the program.
Limited Enrolment: Only 5 spots, ensuring personalised attention and significant growth.
It's through application. You can find more info in this newsletter article.
It's such a pity that companies like Google still rely on outdated screening methods like live coding (based on algorithms and data structures), whereas others already adopt more realistic approaches like asking to build a project e2e. The former makes applying for the company unattractive and heavily influenced by luck.