Random thought: the UK has the advantage of speaking English.
First, that makes it easier for them to pull in other Europeans, since english is commonly the second language of most other Europeans. Second they can also pull in American and Canadian expats much easier than anyone else in Europe.
Germany is more interesting to me. German is not exactly the worlds most common first or second language. So this is more evidence of their complete and utter domination within the eu.
Contrary to what most people believe, I see that native English speakers can learn German rather easily (with a pretty distinct accent, which I really like :)).
Your point stands though, as they usually don't know this before they actually start learning, so they must have other reasons.
In my American high school, I took German as a second language (yay Wisconsin). I then took Mandarin Chinese in college. Even in my fifth year, when a teacher asked me a question, I had a 50/50 chance of thinking of the answer in German first. It was utterly maddening.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to travel abroad or maintain that knowledge, so all I really remember is "ich spreche nür ein bischen deutch". That, and the day that my teacher asked me what "ich habe keine ahnung" meant, I didn't know. She had me ask another student... Imagine my frustration when the only answer was "I have no idea".
"Contrary to what most people believe, I see that native English speakers can learn German rather easily"
I doubt that. While English is part of the West Germanic languages, there are huge grammatical differences. I assume it would be much easier for a Polish or Russian Person to learn German than for an English.
The sentence "Man bites Dog" and "Dog bites Man" has a different meaning in English, due to to position of the noun. In German, both is possible.
"Der Hund beisst den Mann" and
"Den Mann beisst der Hund" has the same meaning.
Declension makes the word order in German very flexible.
As a native English speaker who studied German, Russian, and Polish, German was much easier to learn than the Slavic languages. The case system is smaller than Russian or Polish, and there are far more cognates which makes learning vocabulary much easier. Also, articles (e.g., "a" and "the") are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers of English, but German is similar enough.
Learning cases is a little hard, and the silly capitalization rules are a hindrance, but probably the most difficult thing in German for most English speakers is waiting for the damn verb to make its appearance. It's harder to guess what it will be than it is for native German speakers.
I would guess that learning German would be easier than English for a native speaker of a Slavic language, though, precisely because syntax plays such a critical role in English, which has only the barest vestiges of a case system remaining. My Russian friends in particular make some amusing errors with word order sometimes, but I think it's charming.
Edit: and for the example given, "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man," what is required is a verb change, perhaps a couple of articles, and correct capitalization (unless it's a news headline, in which case it's fine). So, "Dog bites Man" can be written as "The man was bitten by a dog" with the same meaning. English verbs are also hard for non-native speakers, though.
I guess some of this is also, to what level do you need to learn German? Some of the parts of German grammar that are difficult for English speakers can be mostly avoided by just phrasing things differently. Basic use of cases is necessary, but some of the rules around compound sentences can be skipped at first by just using simpler sentences. If what you're after is a reasonable conversational/email level of German, that's enough for many things, and you can always learn more constructs later. If you want to be a professor in the humanities and need to write/speak a formal academic level of German, that's different, but that's probably not the common case for HN readers.
I doubt that Polish people or Russian people learn German much easier. Somehow in English speaking countries there is this fear to learn a very similar language.
There are numbers how long it takes for an English speaker to learn a different language... German belongs to the easiest group.
"Perfect German. Different meaning."
Debatable if a German teacher would accept this sentence in an Essay, except as a stylistic element. Please try to understand the concept of word order and Declension. Try to translate the latin phrase morituri te salutant to English and German. If you can, you have understood declension.
"There are numbers how long it takes for an English speaker to learn a different language... German belongs to the easiest group."
What is really totally irrelevant for the discussion. Please try again to understand the topic.
Sorry, it's not your fault but I found this funny because, of course German is the top first language in the EU, it's EU's most populous country, by far. Romanian is the 7th and Dutch the 8th and so on, pretty much every country has its own national language, with only a few exceptions.
Are there a lot of American expat software engineers in the UK? For most people, it would be a steep pay cut to move from the US to anywhere in the EU.
There are some especially in the city finance and some engineering firms do pay six figures for non managerial engineering talent and while the pound has dropped it’s still possible to get a $130-150k base salary in the city and unlike the US you get a very good pension and benefits on top of that.
But if you compare the averages then yes you’ll be lucky breaking $70K in the EU.
I work for a US organisation in London, and not finance.
The average compensation for engineers is about £100,000 - some above and some below. This is on top of private medical and dental, generous pension contributions and a number of other benefits.
Same for us, finance has slightly above average comp packages especially the bonus but in London it’s possible to get to 100K as an engineer outside of it it begins to drop drastically some tech hubs can have high salaries but Manchester for example tops out at around 80K and that’s also pretty hard to get.
Outside of the UK you might be lucky to get €50-60K even when working for US firms on average this includes Germany.
Some Nordic countries have higher salaries but the CoL is pretty steep.
Overall if you don’t include taxes it’s possible to get competitive salaries in the UK and some parts of Europe once you take into account income tax and VAT you’ll the race isn’t nearly as close anymore.
Also startups do not pay well at all and equity is nearly unheard off even for single digit non-founder employees.
Seriously here in Norway getting over 100K € annually is becoming normal. If you are really talented, then you can even make 150k € annually. Freelancers make over 200k € annually. There is a huge shortage for developers these days, much thanks to "digital transformation" trend.
According to SSB, the 75th percentile for full-time system architects in private industry (the highest paid software developer category) in Norway in 2017 was $103K/year. This is close to the 50th percentile for all software engineers in US in 2017, which was $104K according to BLS. The 50th percentile for system architects in Norway was $87K.
Norway has a higher cost of living due to the 25% VAT, and because the national (non-developer) median salary is so high. Not to mention vehicle and gasoline taxes.
The thing with US salaries is that they're only higher in small circumstances, often what you'll find is someone is earning 100k USD and has an offer for 35-40k GBP will end up living a similar quality life. It sounds like it would be but that's not actually a pay cut. It comes from the fact that a lot of taxes are already given to the UK Govt, along with some strong protections for things like: private pensions, which doesn't happen in the US.
If you are very clever with applying taxes, and you don't pay into a private pension then you might be better off- but it's a good thought exercise to apply the costs of living differences and then work out what level of flexible income you have left, and then what buying power you have with that money.
The quality of life is generally comparable for jobs which technically pay 2x a UK salary in the USA.
Not so much at the high end (dev/engineer), though. Those $150k US salaries are also going to include generous health plans with little cost to the employee at most employers.
Having long term health problems is highly correlated with not being able to work, though, and losing insurance coverage. This is one of the things that surprises many people who think they're well covered with insurance, and then become ill, and it's one of the most insane things about our system of bundling work and health insurance.
> earning 100k USD and has an offer for 35-40k GBP will end up living a similar quality life.
That doesn’t sound right - $100k USD for a good software engineer is about right for second tier US cities where rent, taxes, and food are lower than in England.
Taxes really don’t vary much by city in the UK but rent can be considerably lower. London has the highest house prices but is not on par with NYC or SF; both of which being _considerably_ higher.
Rent is also much lower for the people making 100k salaries sheepmullet mentioned. In NYC, SF, or Seattle, pay will be a lot higher. New grad offers alone are 150k/year these days in big tech.
>For most people, it would be a steep pay cut to move from the US to anywhere in the EU.
You get bit at both ends - you had to pay for an American college degree ($$$) and had none of the social services like unemployment benefits/worker protections someone in the EU gets... then when you finally are making a high wage, you're going to get taxed to high heaven to pay for services you had to pay for (like the expensive degree I just mentioned).
Sadly, the best move looks to be to be frugal in the USA then retire early elsewhere.
A general point: it's important to adjust one's interpretation of salary by factoring in things like cost of living. Software engineers in New York and San Francisco make more money on average than those in other parts of the world, but it's very expensive to live, especially at a respectable standard of living, in both of these cities, dramatically offsetting the jump in salary. London is, of course, also very expensive, so I imagine my comment may not be quite as relevant.
Assuming (wrongly, but that's ok at first approximation) that money spent on academic research is a fraction of GDP, and that there is a positive correlation between money spent on research and jobs in research, UK and Germany should come on top for number of scientists. Plus they have, apart from the French CNRS, the top Institutions for scientific research in Europe.
First, that makes it easier for them to pull in other Europeans, since english is commonly the second language of most other Europeans. Second they can also pull in American and Canadian expats much easier than anyone else in Europe.
Germany is more interesting to me. German is not exactly the worlds most common first or second language. So this is more evidence of their complete and utter domination within the eu.