Definitely NOT Zurich (weather and cost of living) same for London and Amsterdam. Plus (Western) Europe for me it’s just too “familiar” and also boring, organized life with too much rules and restrictions (as I’m definitely more freestyle Slavic mindset). If I must come back to Europe I’d rather just settle back in my home country.
I would be considering either SF or Taipei. Everything except the weather leans towards Taipei (I absolutely hate North of Taiwan weather from Dec to March) but I also always wanted to live in US for a while (but in more „traditional” state than Cali for sure, I think I would fit better in Texas )
Those are all relatively good salaries for the location, so for most people I expect it would be down to other factors like friends, family, hobbies etc.
For me it would be (or actually it is) London and Taipei for family/friends. SF would be bottom of the list, I’m there a few times a year for work and I don’t particularly like the place.
That Zurich salary is crazy good though. But I do not know about COL. I would be hesitant to live in London because of all the stuff going on there now. Amsterdam is fine, like somebody said, you can live elsewhere and commute. Taipei is still one of the better options in relation to taxes and COL depending on your lifestyle. I am not sure about San Francisco. Sounds like a great salary, but I would worry about health insurance and COL.
I basically found what Google pays for intermediate level software engineer in these locations. This is basically top of market salary. Google does their own math for computing COL and adjusting these packages. So yes they’re all adjusted for COL roughly. But obviously in terms of absolute value you’d be saving a lot more in San Francisco/Zurich
There are quite a few in the tech world now. You can get European salaries (or in some cases even US salaries) whilst living in Asia if you’re talented enough.
I missed the boat with tech jobs, apart from translation (which sucks now, consistent work is VERY elusive), there isn’t much I can do remote. What sucks about tech industry is they hire so few people for the profit they made (unlike in the start of industrialization where industrialists often hired massive number of people, which created a huge middle class).
Coding isn’t really my skillset, and I’ve got huge amount of catching up to do with all the various languages out there. Plus language was never my thing.
Agree with this. In my last tech job, one of my colleagues was a marketing guy turned software engineer. Self taught via online courses and nanodegrees and 10hours/week of hard work (on top of a full time marketing job) for a year. And he was pretty good
I take 250k USD in Zurich. With lower income tax and no capital gain tax Switzerland comes ahead. For this salary I can take good mortgage too
Public schools are good, and my kids speak German. Nearby are alps and is great family balance.
Taipei, especially when can get money trough being self employed and pay taxes like locals do. 10 % or nothing. I like Tamsui, so can buy apartment there too. I would get help from parents in law and on weekend would drink my wiskey with weird foreigners like Marco
FYI, your overall tax rate would be close to 20% if you were making 250k per month (3mil a year) in Taipei. And you would be in the 30% marginal bracket
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