Stripe, Square, Microsoft, Google, etc will all pay more in Ireland than they pay in any other EU country.
The problem with Ireland is that you will get no real benefit from the taxes you pay.
If you have family, you'll probably be better off moving to Germany or the Netherlands. There are some serious tax benefits for couples and parents. You will not get that in Ireland.
Specifically, someone close to me left Meta Dublin and moved to Google Berlin and had more money (post taxes) in Germany despite a significant TC cut.
If you don't care about EU, Switzerland. High cost of living but Meta, Google, and Nvidia will offer a salary comparable to the US and lower taxes than the rest of Europe.
Crazy expensive housing, and lot of people cannot even find a place after 6 months moving into the country. Please if someone wants to move to ireland, research about housing first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
But you mention Switzerland which is not in the EU, so maybe you just meant Europe?
Ireland is a little lower on the list but has a large number of European HQs of big companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, AirBnb etc. But the price of housing here is extortionate right now.
Consider the cost of living, not just the highest salary. Norway, Denmark and Switzerland are among the most expensive places to live in the world. You'll pay a lot of your wages in rent, food, tax, utilities etc.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js...
Housing is expensive, but that seems to be a global trend.
After that I'd guess Berlin or Stockholm? Note this is from anecdotes and not hard data.
- UK: Dystopian, collapsing infrastructure, London is super-expensive.
- Germany: Salaries are not generally high, taxation/bureaucracy/housing in the desirable parts.
- Ireland: High taxes, extreme dysfunction, crazy housing costs.
- Netherlands: High taxes and insane wealth tax on your savings and investments based on fictitious assumed rate of return. With current inflation, if you want to build wealth, NL should be last on the list.
- Sweden/Norway: Average (not high) salaries, high cost of living, high taxes.
- Spain/Portugal/Italy/Greece: Low salaries, high taxes, extreme dysfunction.
- Belgium/Luxemburg: Salaries can be higher than average, but I found living there depressing. Cost of living is high.
TL;DR Go to Switzerland. Better yet, move to US. There's no country in Europe that comes close.
Totally agree with you on this. The country is on a verge of collapse, I have been trying to switch rental apartment and its been 6 months that i am sending my references and no one has even responded to me. If i get evicted from my place, i will have to move out of the country. Its mental, nothing works. My wife is waiting for her driving test date, she has applied online 3 months ago and she hasn’t even gotten a date yet. Same goes for most government services.
Also for moving to the US, I don't know if you have any insight on the easiest pathway, would I be right in saying that getting a job in FAANG+ type company and L1B internal transfer after a year is the easiest way to do it?
Also good luck finding a reasonably priced flat in metropolitan areas.
Salaries are a lot lower than in the US, 100k+ are uncommon even among C-levels.
Even better, work remotely for a US company? Developer's salary in SF/NYC are unlike anywhere else in the world.