avalokitesha
Oh you got me steaming until I read the last line 😂 well done!
This right here. I’ll gladly take less pay in Europe than constantly having to worry about my health and whether or not that bit of pain you sometimes have in a weird area means a hospital bill you can’t afford. And even if I loose my job, I know I will not starve, because of our social security system. It will not be fun, but I won’t loose my house or worry about what to eat tomorrow just because I got unlucky and my company went under.
Isn’t the question rather “why do US companies do that” when they could get away with paying less?
I can only speak for myself but I’m not keen on constantly job-hunting like I see so many US engineer advise. I’m looking for a more stable situation where the company seeks to hire long-term, and often in those cases you get benefits that are not monetary. Free access to partnered places like fitness studios or swimming pools can’t really be rolled into your salary, but if you use those often you end up with a financial benefit too. Automatical raises when your child is born is another.
Maybe it’s just a different culture, but I’ll trade in some base salary for a work environment based on mutual trust and goodwill.
Social security. Strong protection against lay-offs. University without paying upfront - just because you don’t care for it as someone who didn’t grow up here, doesn’t mean it’s not a benefit for the majority. Healthcare at affordable prices. Public transport.
The thing is, you only see your own benefit. And I feel that’s a very typical way of looking at life in the US. The state is not here to rob you, but to provide you with a structure to live in that you couldn’t have in the same way on your own. Public transport may not be something you need, but what about the elderly? What about the people who can’t drive for whatever reason?
What if you have an accident that renders you unable to work? It doesn’t even need to be your fault. Someone might loose control over their car and you might get hit. People like that need strong social nets, and people who can work finance them. Elderly people need those. They are often sick (high health care costs) and not longer able to drive (public transport) and if their pension is not enough, the social security kicks in and supports them.
You personally may not be profiting from it right now, but there’s a ton of security built into the system for everyone that gets financed by everyone according to their means.
Maybe there already lies another reason for the lower salaries - if you are from a country which traditionally had your company actually appreciate their employees and make them feel valued, and historically you just had to land your job and could expect to stay with the company the rest of your life, you will not be actively looking unless you get laid off. Loyalty on both sides is still quite common where I live.
I guess it’s a difference in values, which affects your perspective. You can see it as robbing, or as contributing to society.
I’m trying to word it as neutral as possible, but it’s really hard in the values area. I think both sets of values are valid. I may not agree with yours, but that’s the thing with moral values - if you don’t share the same values, you will never see eye to eye or agree. Hard to be objective in such a situation.
Tl,dr: you value different things, which is not evil or bad, but completely valid. It’s just that I personally with my values don’t agree and see it negatively.
I’m not American, but I born and bred in the EU. Please don’t assume wildly :)
I still view it as a value issue: you are looking out for your own good above contributing to society. If everyone does that, it will be utterly impossible for society to actually give back, because you’re depriving society of the taxes it needs to move.
I’d rather contribute to society and the social security net we have. Any society will have people who are unable to work due to disability or sickness, and to me taking care of your weak links is a mark of civilization. We don’t have to leave disabled or injured members of society in the dust to die. We have the means to take care of them, and that’s what taxes are for.
But we kind of lost track of the original question, why the wages are lower in the EU than in the US. In my opinion it’s because with all the social security and insurance it is not necessary and the environment - the society - is providing part of what you get in monetary form in the US.
That’s the official version, but at least when I talk about some average dude it’s way too long and artificial, I don’t think the name Mustermann actually exists.
When I think of the most common name to use in casual conversation, I’d probably go for Müller (maybe Peter? Though the first name is probably heavily generation-dependent).
In older publication you may alse find references to “der deutsche Michel” (the german Michel, short for Michael) as a somewhat condescending reference to the average citizen who is very hesitant to adopt new concepts and tech and not always able or willing to understand complex concepts. Often used to remark that a product/idea will not have a chance on the market because “der deutsche Michel” doesn’t see the pointor would never pick it up.
Haven’t seen that in a while though, I guess Germans have become more open to new stuff :)
My understanding of that article was that it was not necessarily about duplicated code, but duplicated data. If you have two places storing the same data, and different parts of your app go to each of it, you need to somehow keep them in sync, and that’s often a pain.
I’m trying to be very rigorous about avoiding that, duplicated code I’m a bit less rigorous about.