Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US
<i>Europe will not win</i> race for ambitious people.<p>I lived in Sweden for almost one year as an expat (I&#x27;m a software engineer). Now, I live in the Netherlands for more than two years.<p>I can say for sure that Europe is nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of compensation for ambitious software engineers. Sweden went total nuts with taxes, anything above $6500 per month would be taxed at 55-60% tax rate. It&#x27;s effectively cap to <i>enforce</i> equality of outcome.<p>60% tax doesn&#x27;t mean that ultra-high salaries will be taxed at this rate. It means that ultra-high salaries will <i>not</i> exist in job market in the first place.<p>The best Swedish startup threatens to leave Sweden because of regulatory and tax burden [1].<p>The Netherlands recognized importance of highly-skilled expats by introducing tax discounts called &quot;30% ruling&quot;. I do respect their efforts to attract talent. That&#x27;s why I moved from Sweden to the Netherlands in 2016.<p>However, as non-EU citizen you can work only for publicly registered sponsors [2]. Usually, it&#x27;s boring well-established companies. So I missed some cool opportunities due to this limitation.<p>As I learned dutch local job market, I found that almost nobody will pay you 10&#x27;000 EUR per month.<p>Aside from tax and regulatory burden in Europe, there are cultural things like Law of Jante [3]. I can&#x27;t imagine how society with such mentality can attract highly ambitious people.<p>Also, talking about money in Europe is kinda taboo. And dutch automatically repeat &quot;money is not everything&quot;. It wouldb&#x27;t annoy me if someone committed to work for open source software. Or being great painter. But when recruiter respond me &quot;money is not everything&quot; when I&#x27;m asking &quot;too much&quot;, it annoys me a lot.<p>With that in mind, I decided to abandon idea of living in Europe, getting citizenship, learning dutch language etc. It was tough decision for me but it&#x27;s time to move on. It&#x27;s not kind of a society where I want to spend rest of my life. Sorry dutch and swedes, I don&#x27;t fit here.<p>So I decided to move to Hong Kong. I&#x27;ve just got very lucrative job offer in Hong Kong (in HFT). The size of compensation is <i>far beyond of what Europe can offer me</i>. Now, I&#x27;m almost on par with US (I couldn&#x27;t get into US because I don&#x27;t have any degree). Now, I&#x27;m just waiting for my HK visa getting approved.<p>You might troll me saying that, I&#x27;m whining. OK, I have answer to that. Just look at my <i>net salary</i> increases:<p>Russia -&gt; Sweden (2015) +28%<p>Sweden -&gt; Sweden (2015) +15%<p>Sweden -&gt; the Netherlands (2016) +63%<p>the Netherlands -&gt; Hong Kong (2018) +83% (and possible bonus up to 300% of yearly salaries!)<p>I will work like crazy fanatic and in next six years I <i>will</i> be well over $1M of liquid net worth.<p>So Europe lost me. Europe is perfect place for people who just want to work from 9 to 5 and put family as their top priority. It&#x27;s not suited for risk takers.<p>Links:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thelocal.se&#x2F;20160412&#x2F;spotify-founders-sweden-is-heading-in-the-wrong-direction" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thelocal.se&#x2F;20160412&#x2F;spotify-founders-sweden-is-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ind.nl&#x2F;en&#x2F;work&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;Highly-skilled-migrant.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ind.nl&#x2F;en&#x2F;work&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;Highly-skilled-migrant.aspx</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_Jante" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_Jante</a>