Which cities have the best balance of salary/cost of living in Europe for a mid-level product designer?

[lekanfoye123]

I’m considering moving to the EU from the US for a better quality of life. I enjoy skiing, mountains, and hiking, so looking into Zurich but open to warmer climates as well. I noticed in Germany and a lot of EU countries, salaries for product design are quite low. However, in Zurich I’m seeing average salaries of about 110-130CHF. Is this a comfortable livable wage even with the high COL? What are some other countries in the EU that pay relatively well for tech roles?

I currently make 120K in the US, so as much as I want a better quality of life I’m a bit nervous about the drastic pay cut I’d have to take in most EU cities. I’d most likely need a job where I can get by only speaking English. I speak some German and fluent Japanese but I doubt that’s very useful in Europe. I have a Japanese passport and could probably get a German passport via ancestry to avoid visa issues if necessary.

 

[justneed2talk]

@lekanfoye123 Nowhere near that numbers in EU. Said from a product design engineer, the US is another level for pay range. As other says it’s quality of live vs high pay. I choose quality of life, I still earn enough more than the average in the country to not worry about, but I ain’t becoming a millionaire

 

[eee27]

@justneed2talk The trick is to try and land a job at a multi-national company that pays somewhat normalized global rates.

This article goes into some detail: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/

It's a bit old, and it's specific to software engineers, but it also applies to other roles at the kinds of companies that hire a lot of software engineers (Meta, Alphabet, etc.)

 

[justneed2talk]

@eee27 Software engineering is not product design. Software engineering is the highest paying gig atm in tech. So you’re comparing apples with pears

 

[justneed2talk]

@eee27 Also, you seem not familiar with how corporate works. Salaries are not globalised, they open offices based on needs and salaries are country dependent (to a certain extent). Anyhow, I live in the Netherlands and work in a company with >5000 employees in the world. 100k is not possible, maybe at ASML or head of design at Philips.

 

[eee27]

@justneed2talk The salaries are not the same globally, but the baseline is different to local companies. A Google software engineer in Munich is paid much less than one in San Francisco, but still more than one working for BMW at the equivalent level.

You realise 5000 employees is not many right? Amazon employs 1.6 million globally, and AWS alone (so the pure tech part) is over 135,000. Alphabet is over 185,000 and Meta 65,000.

While the actual numbers aren't the same, because the jobs are different, I assure you that a product designer at Google is paid like a Google employee wherever they are in the world. The pattern still applies, even if the raw numbers are different.

 

[justneed2talk]

@eee27 Yeah 5000 is not huge, but it’s not your average startup or middle size company. There are around 150 offices in the world so the reasoning still applies, salaries are based on cost of living of the various countries. + most likely product design is in 2/3 offices in the world it’s not like you do that everywhere. Fact still stands that product design is not what makes people rich, in Google as you mention there are also very few, they mainly do digital design, physical products are the Google nest and a few other things, RnD department may be bigger and they may do more physical stuff, and I expect them to be in the US. Again, product design and digital design are two different worlds, digital pays way more.

 

[twrtoad]

@justneed2talk It depends on a company. If it's normal fully remote company then often they don't discriminate by location.

 

[justneed2talk]

@twrtoad Sure, but I never saw many people doing physical product design remote. For obvious practical reasons of prototyping and testing and so on. Digital product design maybe. Again, what I see is that positions are often opened in east or southern Europe because they are paid almost half what we get in NL. Software engineers are in high demand and it’s a whole different market + they can easily work from home or wherever they want. I can’t since I work on physical stuff

 

[simahnyn]

@justneed2talk Wut? 100 is not possible ? U mean after tax or before tax? There’s plenty of folks I. My dept in Netherlands that earn 100k or more before tax

 

[jacob2i]

@justneed2talk Data scientist earn more then 100k according to wages overview of elsevier

 

[justneed2talk]

@jacob2i Is a data scientist an industrial designer? I don’t think so. Why don’t we factor in surgeons, investment brokers and politicians at this point? Do you realise different career streams have different salaries? And a data scientist can’t become an industrial designer and vice versa, so this is just a useless data point (ironically, since we talk about data science)

 

[converting2christ]

@lekanfoye123 You won't get this type of money you have right now, probably in any of those countries. The cost of living will be a bit lower but don't expect some miracles either. It will be painful and it will take some time to adjust. The better quality of life can happen but there is also a chance you will regret your decision.