zlacker

Before you write these holier-than-though, I-know-the-plight-of-the-common-man comments: check your intuition, are the things they told us in school growing up in Northern Europe still true?

I used SE salaries because this is HN. What does a ”real world” worker actually make?

If you look up the national median salaries you will find the median US worker makes more than the median German household, or more than twice the individual German worker for the same job.

So the exact same math I just did applies on the national statistics as well. Maybe it’s worth thinking about why it feels so important that this isn’t true, that northern EU workers surely must be much better off than their suffering US counterparts. The truth is much more complex than that.

>>jakewi+(OP)
I wasn't talking about Northern Europeans, I was talking about the fact software engineers in America have some of the most cushy, out of touch with reality packages in the world...I was responding too:

So after correcting for vacation, US engineers make about twice German counterparts

"Both will include full health benefits etc."

What I'm saying is that for a lot of people In America this isn't the case and it's those people who would benefit from more time off, especially because there job consists of more than sitting on HN for 50% of the day...