Easier to find work in Europe or US?

markzab

I've noticed some people mention it being very hard to find a job in Europe. I use Europe in general because the posts I've seen have come from people in Britain, London, etc. I've also noticed people mention salaries of 15k, 20k, etc in those areas and that seems a bit lesser than what I've seen handed out in the US.

My question is basically, is there less of a need for IT people (cisco as well) in Europe than there is in the US?

Just curious.

Webmaster

That's comparing apples to oranges, the US is a country and Europe a continent with many very different countries. Demand and salary varies a lot between countries like Poland and Belgium, the UK and Greece, Germany and Hungary. Besides the salary differences within Europe, the cost of living also differs a lot. But in most of Europe there has been a shortage of IT workers for the past 15 years or so. Compared to West Europe, the salaries are about the same in the US. Again it differs a lot per country but also on the demand in a particular area.

I don't know where you read that 15k, 20k and for what types of jobs it is, but regardless of whether it's dollars or euros or pounds, that's certainly below average for most IT jobs. Although, don't forget the exchange rates, the 1 Euro is roughly 1.35 dollar, and with British pounds it's 1.5.

Kaminsky

The IT job market in the UK is changing a lot. There are lots of people trying to get into it and the salaries for the lower grade jobs are dropping accordingly. I saw one strange job offering as little as £6/hour for pc support. I don't know how many applicants they got seeing as you can get £6.50/hour in McDonalds and you get a free lunch. There is also an influx of people from other European countries adding to the mix. Poland especially is providing highly educated and qualified new comers across all professions. Especially IT and plumbing. Work in Poland is tough to get. My neighbour who is Polish told me of a cleaning job in an international hotel over there that had 3 fluent languages as the minimum requirement and they still got flooded with applicants. Such is the great state of their education system.

As you rise up through the more senior jobs the salaries tend to be between £20k-£30k with managers on £35k ish typically. MS cert profesions only will cap out whereas Cisco will take you higher with CCNP + experience giving £40k-£60k contracting. Just having the cert will not cut it though for these sort of jobs. They wan't proven track records and succesfull projects under your belt and to be able to pick up a project and run with it to completion. There is a lot of digitalisation and internet enabling going on across the UK which is why these fields are bringing in the cash.

With that said, the cost of actually living in the UK is getting rediculously expensive with everyone wanting their slice of your pay packet. National Tax, National Insurance, Council Tax, TV Licence (we have to pay a tax to have a tv which goes to fund the BBC only - not the other channels who have to get their money from advertising / bizarre!), car tax, car insurance, Car MOT, internet access. Utility bills are growing at an alarming rate and house prices are rediculous. Typically a mortgate will be getting close to half your monthly take home. Food is getting cheaper but so is the quality and for the decent quality food you got before, it's now called "Premium" and so is it's price. Clothes seem to work on the same principal with the cheaper clothes coming in from china and other places like that and selling cheap whilst the named brands you used to buy are going higher and higher for the same product for some reason unknown to me.

Population monitoring is becoming rediculous with speed cameras everywhere and approaching a third of the population has been caught out and hit with 3 points and an £80 fine. This is so common now that car hire firms won't consider 3 points for speeding as a negative anymore. Similarly things like littering attracting the same attention. A friend of mine made the mistake of dropping a cigarette butt out of her car window in town and had a automatically generated fine (with picture as proof of her misdeads) of £60 sitting in her mailbox 2 days later. These funds go straight to the local council but somehow never seem to re appear in a council tax rebate.

Living in the UK these days, you feel more and more like cattle just there to have the money milked out of you while everyone tries to make themselves look good on the stock exchange. Public annoyance is growing and the divide between have and have nots is growing especially due to the house prices. Not a chance in hell that my kids will be able to buy their own home in 15-20 years. Not a chance! TV programs showing how to add a couple coats of paint to your house and sell it for £10k more are all over the place and people are urged to buy cheap, do up and sell on for a good profit. First time buyers are having a really hard time now with their parents having to remortgage their own homes to help out their children onto the first rung.

Everyone seems to be getting more and more greedy due to the ever tightening of their purse strings. Probably why there is an ever increasing number of British emigrating on a daily basis and there is a popular joke here, "Will the last Briton to leave please turn off the lights".
The days of love thy neighbour in the UK are well and truly over.


Oh, well I answered the question but post then turned into a what's wrong with working in the UK post.. Sorry about that. Feels better getting it off my chest though

Pash

yup its true ^^ over here our politicians wan't to make the pound look strong compared to foreign currency. But the problem is because of this our economy is a balance of more outgoing's than incomings for the average working joe. Meaning more debt, high mortgage prices and competitve job market's.

Im in a situation atm where i need to move closer to london to decrease my commute time because I am not liking it currently. However, even trying to find a property to rent is like an epic battle. I seriously am considering getting my few years experience and then finding a good destination and moving abroad while im still young. This country is a battle now to live in. You think we are joking when we say that? We really arent. Btw britain isnt the only euro country to be having its problems atm and im sure there are areas in the US having the same sorta ****.

Happy easter ! >:D

Plantwiz

markzab wrote:

I've noticed some people mention it being very hard to find a job in Europe. I use Europe in general because the posts I've seen have come from people in Britain, London, etc. I've also noticed people mention salaries of 15k, 20k, etc in those areas and that seems a bit lesser than what I've seen handed out in the US.

My question is basically, is there less of a need for IT people (cisco as well) in Europe than there is in the US?

Just curious.

I've friends in a number of countries in Europe and various states in the US as well as providences in Canada.

I think what you'll find is that a Great worker is generally welcome in most companies. IT work probably isn't as HOT as Medical support work and Transportation, but Good people are needed in most places.

If you planning on leaving the US to go to another country, make sure you consider cost of living, distance from existing family/friends, as well as cutltural differences that you'll want to be familiar with as to not offend the locals and possibly help land a job overseas.

15K dollars in the US is not equal to 15K in Euro. As already mentioned, your question isn't an equal comparision.

markzab

Sorry about the dollars to euro's mix-up. I just couldn't find where on the keyboard the symbol was. I posted this because I thought I saw a few posts on these forums from people around the UK saying they got jobs at around 15-20k euro's and thought that was a bit low.

Plantwiz

Even still, that's $20-26K in US dollars and isn't bad in many areas of the US.

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi

markzab

Plantwiz wrote:

Even still, that's $20-26K in US dollars and isn't bad in many areas of the US.

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi

Sounds bad to me. Maybe because I've always lived or worked in PA, NJ, NY, or FL. Guess that salaries are higher here than in places like Utah for example.

Plantwiz

Salary has to do with a variety of variables:
1. How much the company can afford
2. How much the employee is worth. Say a person is an established speaker, writer etc.. and any work they do will benefit the company for marketing/sales efforts.
3. How difficult it is to find someone qualified
4. How difficult it is to keep them once found
5. The applicants negotiation skills (the company isn't likely to hire someone at the max they are willing to pay
6. The going rate in that area, for that industry, for that sized company.
7. Male or female (as much as no one in a corporation will admit this...it's still very true and still VERY much fact that a female will NOT earn what a male co-worker earns even if she 1. is more qualified. 2. a better worker. 3. Offers more to the clients/company then her male counterpart.

Now, not every company has this gender pay bias, but in the US across the corporate world it is a very, very true problem. Personally, I just don't fight it and have been a victim of it...I've just found better work and left. Now I work for fun and so long as I cover my bills...I'm happy.

$20K is certainly a decent entry-level wage. It's not what a person makes in 6mo or 1 year...because if they are growing/learning etc... they'll likely be promoted above the entry-wage in no time.

And I believe you are correct...the larger cities probably start closer to $30K. However, I know people in NY and they are in that $12-$14 per hour range. Just means you share living expenses with some friends and maybe work an extra job until things start to click. Everyone cannot start at $40K+...there are not that many who generate that sort of income to cover their lazy butts.

plettner

Years ago I was living in Germany (2000-2001). I speak the local lingo and applied for a number of IT jobs. I got a few interviews, but no jobs. Admittedly, I had no certs back then. I was told by some people that the HR departments in the various firms in Germany look very closely at what certs you have, especially uni degrees, etc.

Anyway, I couldn't find anything decent so I moved back to Aus. I think at the time it was after the dot.com bubble burst and IT work was very competitive in Germany. Also, many companies such as Siemens were downsizing.

Webmaster

Sounds like had some bad luck plettner. In 2000-2001 we just had the millennium bug so things were slowing down a bit, but a large part of Europe needed extra IT workers because of the switch to those darn Euros. After 2002 things got worse, but right now IT is pretty much booming again. Here (the Netherlands) they sometimes pay you just to show up at an interview (per minute), but besides that, getting the company car/laptop/cellphone/high salary is still very much an option for skilled IT workers. The main difference with 5-10 years ago is that you have to specialize in something, while back then you could simply choose the area in IT in which you wanted to work.

Plantwiz wrote:

Now, not every company has this gender pay bias, but in the US across the corporate world it is a very, very true problem.

I only had a handful of female coworkers who were actually in IT so I don't have enough data to get a good picture, but it seems we have some positive discrimination thing going on here. Basically meaning females get paid 100-200 bucks per month extra just to avoid this situation but also to attract more female workers. Obviously not a healthy approach either.

Plantwiz

Webmaster wrote:

Plantwiz wrote:

Now, not every company has this gender pay bias, but in the US across the corporate world it is a very, very true problem.

I only had a handful of female coworkers who were actually in IT so I don't have enough data to get a good picture, but it seems we have some positive discrimination thing going on here. Basically meaning females get paid 100-200 bucks per month extra just to avoid this situation but also to attract more female workers. Obviously not a healthy approach either.

No, it's not a good practice regardless of who is on the better pay side. If a job is worth 'x', then that's what should be the wage, period. (IMNSHO) After a while, there may be some reason to pay (reward) an employee for extra work or value he/she is adding to the organization, but filling a quota or recruitment plan is just poor business. No stopping it until workers stop accepting the 'gifts'.

plettner

Webmaster wrote:

Sounds like had some bad luck plettner. In 2000-2001 we just had the millennium bug so things were slowing down a bit, but a large part of Europe needed extra IT workers because of the switch to those darn Euros. After 2002 things got worse, but right now IT is pretty much booming again. Here (the Netherlands) they sometimes pay you just to show up at an interview (per minute), but besides that, getting the company car/laptop/cellphone/high salary is still very much an option for skilled IT workers. The main difference with 5-10 years ago is that you have to specialize in something, while back then you could simply choose the area in IT in which you wanted to work.

I think a lot of emplyers thought I might just up and leave at any moment back to Australia. Although, I did want to stay in Europe for 5 years. Becuase I also have a German passport (my parents are German), I would be eliglble to recieve the pension after 5 years of work upon turning 55.

If I could go back in timw and do it differently, I would get my A+, Network+, MCSA/MCSE at the very least and then look for work in Germany.

I thought about looking for work in the Netherlands but becuase I can't speak Dutch, I never tried.

Webmaster

I thought about looking for work in the Netherlands but becuase I can't speak Dutch, I never tried.

It obviously limits your options, despite the fact that most Dutch people are able speak German and/or English and most of our server and network systems 'run' the US English language. But, it limits your options only to the larger, international organizations who are the most likely to hire temporary foreign workers in the first place. Especially considering you speak both German and English you might be suprised. The Netherlands is a very small country with many international organizations who want people who speak more than one language 'fluently'. In many of those companies English is the primary language. It's quite typical actually, if we go to another European country on holiday we buy this small dictionary and try to produce some words in that foreign language to get around. But if Germans, French, Brits, Spanish etc come to the Netherlands they ask the direction to the hotel in their own language. This has been the case since the beginning of the Netherlands and it's somewhat tradition to adjust. Possibly also because Dutch is hard to learn in the first place, I wouldn't suggest on actually trying. Anyway, as I mentioned in an earlier reply it depends on a lot of other factors too. And as you mentioned yourself, "they look very closely at what certs you have, especially uni degrees, etc.", especially the latter applies here too. Depending on all that, the language doesn't have to be an obstacle. The same goes for many large international organizations in Belgium and Ireland.