Should you move to Europe?

8 min readSep 17, 2022

Background

In about 15 days, it’d be a year since I moved to Europe, and every week (day?) there’s someone who asks the question “Should I move to Europe?” I wanted to write a post to try and offer a framework for people wrangling with this decision. But it is a difficult question and like most life advice, the answer is “It depends.”

Who this post is aimed at

This post is aimed at people in high-paying tech jobs in India who are considering moving out of the country (specifically to Europe) for personal or professional reasons.
This post is also aimed at people who have job offers from Europe and within India, and are not able to make a call on what to do.
This post is not for people outside of the tech industry nor is it a step-by-step migration checklist (I might write a separate post on the latter, later).

Why we moved out of India

We made the decision to move out of India in May 2021 for the following reasons:

Institutional apathy during the second wave of COVID.
Crumbling physical infrastructure in Bangalore (where most tech jobs are centered).
Wanting to experience other cultures and have a holistic life.
Wanting to eventually get a different passport.
Letting our child grow up in a diverse, multi-cultural space, as a global citizen.

However, the decision was not an easy one because:

I was in a great place career-wise and had other extremely lucrative, high-paying opportunities within India.
My wife had a great community and a workplace she enjoyed being a part of.
We just had our son and had an incredible support system in place — parents, siblings, a nanny, excellent house help, etc.
India was outpacing pretty much any other country in terms of technological growth and the tech industry was lovely to be a part of.

If you’re reading this post, it’s likely that some of these apply to you as well.

Our framework for picking a country

We weighed a number of countries across continents — the US, UK, Netherlands, Dubai, Singapore, Germany, etc. — on the following parameters, with different weights for each.

Quality of life: The overall quality of life, in terms of access to healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc? Do we have clean air and water? Are there enough opportunities for travel and recreation? Would we be socially, politically, and economically safe? What are the material living conditions — quality of homes, access to Indian communities, etc.?
Compensation: What percentile of national net household income would we be in, in that country, at our respective career levels?
Purchasing power parity: We lived a reasonably elite life in India, in a modest 3-bedroom house but in a posh locality. We could afford 2–3 caretakers for the home/kid. We could afford even a monthly meal at a 5-star hotel without thinking. We were able to do this because we were probably in the top 0.5% of India. Given all this, what would our purchasing power look like, adjusted for compensation in that country?
Proximity to home: Both our parents would want to visit often — ergo, the place cannot be too far off (more than a night’s journey) from Chennai.
Present and future opportunities: The number of opportunities for employment and growth in that country or moving from there.
Ease of migration and path to citizenship: How easy is it to migrate to that country?

And we zeroed in on … Germany.

Continental Europe is hardly the first place in mind for anyone wanting to grow in a tech career. It’s usually Singapore, London, or the Bay Area. And Germany is a particularly unlikely choice for many people (especially Indians) to move to because of the language barrier, lack of as vibrant an Indian community (as say, London), high taxes etc.

However, my personal goals aligned very well with what Europe (and in particular, Germany) had to offer:

A very sensible work-life harmony but with enough future opportunities for career growth (I believe that Berlin will be high-tech’s alternative to London in a post-Brexit world and Europe is known for its excellent WLB; it is also reasonably possible for mid/senior level folks to convert roles in Europe pretty easily)
Excellent civic infrastructure and reasonably high purchasing power (Berlin is one of the more affordable European cities, that also comes with the great — although a little old, boring, and industrial — German infrastructure)
Overnight flight to India to make it easy for parents/us to visit (Frankfurt is easily one of the best connected airports in the world and Berlin is a 1-hour flight away from FRA — let’s not talk about Berlin’s airport)
One of the best childcare support systems and very good educational opportunities (Arjun gets €220 every month and as-good-as-free all-day daycare. His public school/college education would also be fully funded by the state)
Super easy to migrate with an extremely powerful passport (albeit with a cumbersome process to get one) (The European Blue Card system is such a beauty, in contrast to the nightmare that is the American H1-B)

So we ended up in Berlin with me at Wolt (now acquired by DoorDash) and my wife making an internal move from IBM India to IBM Germany! This is a decision that worked out quite well for us professionally and personally, but a year into this journey, I actually have learned a lot about who it is for and who it definitely isn’t for. Europe has its attractions, but …

You should not move to Europe if…

Career and the hustle are very important to you: This is VERY important. You should remember a few things about Europe (especially in comparison to India): A) There is no hustle here. People don’t give a shit about their jobs beyond a point. B) Career growth is harder in Europe and with fewer learning opportunities. C) Talent density in India is much, much higher than Europe.
You do not want to do a lot of household work: If you are anything like me, you’re going to struggle in Europe. A lot of the time freed up by great WLB is going to be spent in keeping the household in a sane condition, especially if you are a family. And it’s super expensive to get help (a few hours of carpentry work would set you back by €100–200, easily). Forget having a maid who takes out the trash or a chef who cooks for you.
Money is a very important factor for you: If you’re a senior person in tech, you are going to make less in Europe than you do in India. Period. And I’m not even talking adjusted for purchasing power — you are literally gonna make 60–70% of what you’d make in India in a direct Euro → Rupee conversion. And of course, purchasing power is lower in Europe.
You want to sustain your luxurious lifestyle: Related to the purchasing power point is luxury. It’s extremely easy to live a luxurious lifestyle in India. It’s near impossible to do that on a mid/senior level pay in Europe. To put it in context, PPP calculators tell me that to live a life that someone lives earning ₹60 lakhs in India, you’d need a salary of €192,000 in Europe. I know folks in tech at VP/C-level roles who don’t make that much in base pay.
You are single: Don’t get me wrong — I hear the dating scene here is great (not sure if that holds true for Indians) but you’re easily going to give up ~45% of your income in taxes and not enjoy many of those benefits.
You are used to privilege/getting things instantaneously: 10-minute groceries at the touch of a button, affordable private healthcare with no waiting, hair salon appointments on a whim, last min this, last min that. None of that is gonna fly in Europe. (Fun story: Pawblo’s grooming appointments are done 6 weeks in advance, minimum. And the groomer is booked out for months.)

You could move to Europe if…

You want really good work-life harmony and want more time for family: Except for a handful of people, everyone I know enjoys an extremely good life outside of work. There’s no “work like there’s no tomorrow” culture (probably one of the reasons why I think Europe will lose to China/India in the long run, but that’s a different story). You’ll definitely be able to put family first and get a lot of quality time with them.
Changing citizenship is on your radar: While difficult, it’s not impossible to become a citizen of any of the European countries. Permanent residence in 2–3 years is a given and even citizenship is quite fast relative to the US. (Although I think countries like Canada fare better in this)
You want great civic infrastructure and a ‘system’ that works: As someone who never used public transport in India, I now cannot imagine moving to a city without great public transport connectivity. It’s THAT good and convenient. Same goes for roads, quality of air/water, public institutions, etc. I’m generally very impressed by how efficient and corruption-free these systems are.
You want to travel a lot: While it is true that people without kids do travel more than we do, we have been able to cover quite a bit of ground in the past 6–7 months since we started traveling. Want to go to Prague? 4–5 hours by train. Brussels? 1 hour by flight. You can also rent a car and do country hopping. Additionally, the EU Residence Permit is advantageous when you want to enter certain countries (like UAE) without a prior visa.
Living in a high-trust, corruption free society is important to you: It’s only once you move outside India, it begins to hit you how much of a low trust country we are, and how beautiful high-trust cultures are. It genuinely makes you a better person.
You have children whom you want to grow more holistically: Children get exposed to a variety of cultures, way of living from early on, and in my view, it has some distinct advantages in terms of growth. Especially when linked to the high-trust point above.
You are a minority and you would prefer a safe-space: I know some LGBT friends of mine who wanted to move to Europe to be in a more inclusive place. Places like Berlin, especially, are incredibly inclusive!

Conclusion

If the reasons to move to Europe sound very ‘personal’, you have understood the post well. Anyone who wants to move to grow professionally or assumes that work-life balance automatically translates to more free time, is going to be disappointed. Early-career folks are better off staying back in India.

My recommendation would be: Know precisely why you are moving; if it’s just that you have an offer and ‘want to explore’, think deeper. The ramifications of the decision will be felt day-day. This only makes sense only for a certain cohort of people.