Salary expectations for move to Europe

October 26, 2016 7:37 PM

I recently dabbled my toe in the European job market, and one of the first things that I was asked was my salary expectations.

While I can convert my current salary into Euros to get a starting idea, there are a lot of other factors that come into play [cost of living, local market expectations, tax differences etc]. I don't want to lowball myself, but nor do I want to price myself out of the market.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have moved to Europe about how they managed the salary/benefits issue.

If your advice is "don't provide a salary expectation" I still need an answer to this question so that I can negotiate an offer.

Info about me:
I'm a senior IT professional with very marketable skills, so finding a job shouldn't be a problem.
I'm currently looking at Ireland, Netherlands & Germany, but I'm open to other options.
I'm not in the U.S. - so U.S. - centric advice won't be useful.

posted by HiroProtagonist to Work & Money (4 answers total)

For the Netherlands, I'd take a look at the average salary data from Glassdoor and from payscale.com. I think they both skew a bit low -- for example, I currently make about 9% more than the reported maximum salary for my position -- but they'll give you another data point in addition to a simple currency conversion.

As a highly skilled migrant, you'll almost certainly be granted the 30% ruling, which is explained in English here and here; basically, you only pay taxes on 70% of your income. So keep that in mind when negotiating. This explains the Dutch tax system (though the numbers are a bit out-of-date) and this is a pretty good tax calculator.

Also to keep in mind when negotiating: some companies pay a "13th month", which is an end-of-year bonus that's equivalent to one month's pay. Also, some companies have "holiday pay", which is a sort of fund that you pay into each month and that is paid out in the spring, usually with your April or May salary IIRC (my current employer doesn't do that). So that impacts your monthly take-home pay.

Benefits-wise, you'll pay a monthly premium for health insurance, but you don't pay for normal doctor visits, and I think healthcare costs are generally reasonable (but I came here from the US, so yeah). There are also other types of insurance that Dutch people normally have, such as insurance in case you become unable to work. Those premiums may be deducted from your salary.

Your employer will almost certainly compensate you for your commute, either by buying you (or reimbursing you for) a public transportation pass or by paying you a travel allowance (I think it's around €0.20 per km these days). That would be on top of your negotiated salary.

Your minimum number of vacation days is four times the number of days you work per week, although personally, I've never worked for a company that offered less than 25 days per year; not sure how you want to calculate that monetarily, but it's worth keeping in mind.
posted by neushoorn at 10:00 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also for the Netherlands, in order to rent an apartment, you'll often need to show that your monthly salary is roughly 3x your rent. In Amsterdam that can be quite high (we are in the midst of a housing crisis). So think about where you want to live and apply this to salary requirements. Maybe you can look online at apartment listings to get an idea of what the range of rent is.

The Amsterdam sub-Reddit (I know, I know) is actually a good source of info for all of this. People ask there regularly about average salaries for various jobs and the like. You might think of browsing the Reddit sub for your various destination cities/countries.
posted by Brittanie at 12:27 AM on October 27, 2016

Yes, the thing is that salary and benefits and state provisions are very different in all these countries. And the cost of living between these countries and within each of them is also very different. So your question is too broad.

Personally, I'd narrow it down to a small number of cities based on lifestyle preferences. Things like cultural amenities, access to the outdoors and what kind of outdoors, how liberal or otherwise are the locals, is there a good expat community or not, travel links, do you want/need a car? For example, Berlin and Munich are both large cities in Germany but they differ significantly in all these aspects.

After a while living in another country stops being exciting and it is often the small things that make or break a location at that point. So pay attention to things like shop opening hrs for example as well.

Once you've used these factors to find a small number of locations that are desirable to you you can start to work out what it would take for you to live there. Hit the local expat forums to learn about the small things oif daily life but also tax and social provisions, be it by the state or private benefits. Then you can see how far glassdoor or similar gets you.

Bear in mind that having dependents will often have a significant impact on the tax and state benefits equation but also the small things because whilst you're at work a trailing spouse or school aged children face completely different challenges.
posted by koahiatamadl at 3:35 AM on October 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm with koahiatamadl on this one. I went through this process in a relocation from Canada to the UK and I had to give up on trying to figure out what my "equivalent" salary would be. I ended up taking a cost-based approach. That is, researching what it would cost to replicate my lifestyle in the UK.

I found this to be pretty easy for life's biggest expenses:

-housing (rent and house prices are easy to search)
-vehicle (wasn't relevant for me, but you may want to look at car prices, mileage, vehicle insurance, registration costs, fuel prices - all easily searchable)
-food - simulate a grocery trip using an online grocery provider in your target location
-income tax - most tax agencies have some kind of basic calculator for you to come up with a ballpark average tax rate at various salary levels

You can then work more broadly with other areas. i.e. 10% of salary on household purchases, 15% on dining out and other entertainment, etc, etc. But, I think if you start with housing, car (if applicable), food, and tax, you'll get a long way there.
posted by bkpiano at 9:58 AM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]