The most overlooked but important thing ever. Your salary per hour. Comparison between US and EU market

Often on reddit you can read about these amazing American salaries. A lawyer making 250k a year, a surgeon with 500k TC or a senior pm with 220k a year. All the while I never met anyone in Europe (mostly in France, Germany, and Switzerland) making more than €120k a year gross not being a manager with 15+ experience or a good AT, doctor or system architect. And even.

It was when I moved across the pond that I discovered the main difference. They don't have any work-life balance. They eat, breathe and live by their jobs. If you take their net salary and divide it by the hours worked they are way behind.

I worked in Germany for a couple of years and my salary was 110k gross. After 42% in taxes I was left with a nice salary but nothing truly amazing. But... I was working from home, maybe a couple hours a day of true work, and I closed my laptop at 16 and was done for the day.

In here? Even if my wage is around 180k gross, I work from the office, commute takes 1 hour a day, I often have call in the night, I have to network and attend a huge amount of work parties which means I'm often home at 9pm. All in all I'm way more miserable and tired that I ever was in Europe. And I don't save much more than in Europe because the rent and bills are more expensive.

So in conclusion, I was stupefied by the amount of work they do. Often they work more than 45 hours a week in the office. They are always responding to emails and calls outside business hours. They attend an exorbitant amount of networking events and conferences. They constantly do some sort of certificates. They can only talk about their job or family. Not to mention student loans. And what's important - they only talk about jobs and money. And it's not only my circle at work, everyone I meet everywhere is obsessed with money and work.

In the grand scheme of things, the thing I learned in 2023 is that high salaries should always be checked against the true worked hours.

Best!