Where should a junior EA computer scientist go (with an EU passport)?
A personal-ish breakdown of the "best" cities to move to.
[day 24/30 - Epistemic status: put my whole researchussy into this one]
The most recent version of this post can be found on the EA Forum
I want this post to remain as a “live document”. If you live in one of these places and you notice something that makes you go “that’s not true at all!” or “you should really mention this” please text me so I know and I can fix it.
Some backstory on me!
Earlier this year I posted on the EA forum: “What is the most active EA hub for someone with an EU passport”.
Post contents:
Interested in AI (safety) research and pursuing a career of earning to give.
Would love to meet a lot of fellow EAs/vegans/rationalist types while doing this.
I’m currently in Belgium. And almost finished with my computer science masters degree from a ~150 ranked university.
I have the full intention to leave because of the following reasons:
1) Belgian wages are bad (median after tax is 2500 euros/month, taxation very progressive)
2) I don’t really care for leaving my family behind right now
3) The EA scene is quite dead here.
4) There’s little jobs in my sector in Belgium.So I want to move to a big city (presumably). I’d love to go to SF but passport/h1b situation doesn’t allow me to (I doubt I’d be able to get a job there yet anyway).
Any suggestions? My current considerations are Amsterdam, Zurich (if I can get in), Berlin & London. I just don’t know which one of these would be easiest to get a job in/most money left over to give/most EAs.I’m fluent in Dutch and English, and learning German
Sorry if this is a slightly unconventional question, but this is genuinely a hard question to google. I figured someone here has probably been in my shoes before.
Someone in the comments inspired me to do a more thorough breakdown of the “optimal“ cities. This was going to be a necessary exercise for me to do eventually anyway, and I figured I might as well have it double as a blog post, because I think the “EU passport, fresh compsci grad, WEIRD, wants EA/rat community and is looking for what city to move to” is quite a common situation!
This post will be quite personal but I’ll try to keep it research-doc-ish for people stumbling upon this later!
Methodology
How?
For comparing wages I will use levels.fyi, and I will use the general compensation for the title “software engineer”. This is obviously imperfect. There will be some selection bias there, since probably higher earners are more likely to post their salaries on there. It’s also likely that “Software Engineer” as a title will bias for and bias against other cities. But it’s the best I have. Better than taking the average salary, since I want to go into tech.
For cost of living I will use this site. I am literally just trusting them that it’s accurate, sometimes the results don’t align well with my intuition, so if you find a better estimate, let me know.
I use my knowledge that I have acquired via traveling to these places, combined with research and anecdotes of others.
I wrote all of this in a single day, so forgive me for the simplifications made for tax calculations. Income tax is very complicated. Tax rebate systems and math make my head hurt.
I didn’t take into account for example multiplier effects that could be generated for tax rebates you get in Germany and Belgium that you can donate again and then you get a rebate on that and donate again ad infinitum.
The post is also mainly from an earning to give perspective, not “what job can you do the most good”.
Also I wrote all these 5000 words on vyvanse. I don’t feel like proofreading.
The criteria
Here’s what I care about in a city, vaguely tiered but mostly in no particular order:
Can I get in? This one is obvious but overlooked. If you can’t get in, nothing else matters does it?
Donation/career potential? (so this is about how much you can expect to donate living there, and how much you can expect to build out a career in the area/advance)
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area? (and how well connected is it to adjacent communities)
What’s it like to live there? (with this I mean the close to “objective” stuff. Bike-ability, how much nature, how much tourism, crime rates but also the subjective stuff that’s more relevant to me: I am a transgender woman, I speak dutch & english and I’m vegan).
Alright, let’s judge all the cities on these criteria and then conclude what my best options are. I’ll order them in how interesting they initially seem to me.
San Francisco/Bay area
The obvious one.
Can I get in?
Probably not! My options would be one of the following:
get really cracked, and have someone sponsor a H1B despite the $100k sponsorship rule
get really cracked, and get in on an O1 visa
get really cracked, and work at a company with US HQ and get relocated on L1
get really cracked/lucky and have a non-profit sponsor an H1B since they are exempt from the $100K cost.
Study in America and then work there (not possible for me, financially)
Get lucky (~0.25% chance per year) and win a Diversity Immigrant Visa (Belgium is eligible!)
Get an American partner
All roads seem to lead to “getting really cracked” for this one, so I will work on that. Maybe later in my career.
(I am taking american wife applications, by the way)
Donation/career potential?
San Francisco Wins Outright.1
People complain about high cost of living in SF, which is probably true, but as far as I can tell this is basically a non-issue if you are in the top 80% of tech workers.
Yearly cost of living is estimated at $49,320. (this seems very low! I doubt the accuracy of this, but maybe the californians really are just bad with money!)
And your bottom 25th% compensation is ~$142K. (sampling bias here is obvious, getting a tech job in SF is hard! But who cares since we’re talking about someone who already could have said job). After taxes (estimate: 30% effective) this comes out to $99.4k
Donate-able income is ~$50k
Because of its generous donation laws, you can deduct 60% of your AGI. (yes it’s called AGI, it stands for adjusted gross income) so this would add around a $12k increase
Amount going to charities: ~$62k/yr
Career growth potential is insane. Almost every big tech startup has offices here, especially in AI. There’s no real salary cap. If you get good enough, 7 figures is not off the table.
the difference between 25th and 75th percentile is a 39% increase.
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
The EA/rationalist scene there is so crazy that it does not require elaboration.
I’m only gonna say this once, but know that every other city loses dramatically on this front, by virtue of not being SF. So when I later call Zurich “OK!” for EA community, know that it’s with this caveat.
A big con is that you are far away from everywhere else that is not LA. A problem cities like Zurich don’t have for example. This is nice to mention since I think Americans forget Europeans can just travel in their own continent with relative ease.
How “nice” is living there?
Disclaimer: Haven’t been.
The bay is quite the fucked up place. They have the worst homeless problem on this list by far. Drug addiction rates are highest. Crime rates are highest.
If you move there for tech work, know that you are contributing to displacement of the non-tech people there. (I personally don’t care too much about this, but maybe you think that is important)
I’m hesitant to call it public transport: but apparently getting around is quite easy albeit very American. It’s Waymos and Ubers.
A negative for most people, but maybe not for some: the work culture is insane. From what I hear working on weekends is not only common but expected. Connections are flaky, ghosting is endemic and there’s a permanent status game. This will be the reason to go for some and the reason to never go for others. This is the cost you pay for “the city where the big tech things happen”. Know what you sign up for.
I think I have quit an idealized view of the city. I can’t judge the city vibes that well until I have actually been (and even then) but I suspect I might love it there.
California/SF is very progressive when it comes to trans acceptance. The problem is that it is subject to US law, and being trans in America sounds very scary. The political climate is also just very unstable by virtue of being in the US.
From what I’ve heard, being vegan in SF it just OK. They have soylent over there. That has to count for something!
Because I have a lot of european friends it’s geography does suck. I would be cut off from my friends.
Zurich
My personal darling
Can I get in?
The biggest hurdles are the following:
The job market is super-competitive, every other europoor wants a piece of that sweet sweet Zurich salary, so I’ll have to get really good and/or leverage connections2
Swiss laws that say they have to prioritize Swiss citizens as candidates.3
Donation/career potential?
The cost of living is estimated at $44,292. I’ve heard from swiss friends and from the ETH cost of living doc4, closer to $24k, but I’ll work with the former estimate for consistency.
Zurich wages are crazy good. Know that we’re again dealing with selection bias because of the insanely competitive job market. The 25th percentile yearly comp is $129k. With help from my Swiss friend we got an effective tax rate of around 15% (tax brackets lower because of donations)5, so let’s call it a clean $109.65k
So your donate-able income comes to around $65.35k
You can deduct donations up to 20% of the tax rate of your federal income, but it varies from canton to canton, which would change our effective tax rate because we would fall in a different tax bracket…
It’s a mess and it’s not that much, I’ll estimate around a 5% total deduction. which comes out to around $5k.
Amount going to charities: ~$70.35k/yr
Not bad!
The salary cap seems very high too, the difference between 25th and 75th percentile is a 90% increase.
Anthropic and OpenAI recently opened research offices in Zurich. there’s a huge Google office and Boston Dynamics is there as well. Tons of companies. Too many to even name! It’s hard to do better in Europe.
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
It’s not ideal.
There’s an EA coworking space and weekly events. There’s no yearly EAG(x) that I know of sadly.6
There was AI safety day at ETH, which was pretty big.
Using the LW map as a heuristic, it seems kind of dead on the rationalist front, apparently there was some drama.
(If you are in the Swiss EA/rat community and know more, text me!)
You are very connected to the rest of Europe though. Because relative purchasing power is so high and because it’s central European geography, travel is quick and cheap.
I’m scared of the Lugano cryptobros though…
What’s it like to live there?
It seems amazing, so amazing that maybe it would get boring.
The infrastructure is great, public transport is amazing and always on time.
Biking infrastructure sucks, but maybe getting better. Gonna be a big downgrade compared to Belgium.
Huge one: my best friends live in Zurich.
The crime rates are very low, the political climate is extremely stable. (to its own detriment sometimes!)
It’s pretty good for being trans, with the notable exception that surrogacy is completely illegal and adoption is very tricky. So if I want kids at any point that will be a hurdle. I don’t think so though, so that should be fine.
I have a hunch that if things get really, really bad for trans people in the future, that I will be very glad to have chosen Switzerland.
Obviously you don’t understand the full nuances of a culture until you live there, but I feel like this one may be Zurich’s weak spot for me. Swiss people want nothing to do with you, they don’t want to talk to you, they don’t value being unique.
Being a vegan in Zurich seemed pretty bad compared to the others on this list (because eating out is also super-expensive!), but definitely manageable. (shoutout tinyfish chickpea sushi <3)
Berlin
<3
Can I get in?
Very likely. Passport is a non-factor because of freedom of movement. I don’t even need a permit or anything, I can just go.
Finding an apartment is apparently very tricky though.
Job market isn’t too competitive from what I’ve heard, and apparently there are lots of startups.
Donation/career potential?
Cost of living is estimated at $26,000
Income you can expect in the bottom 25th percentile is $84,2k. I estimate german effective tax rate at 35%, so after tax we have $54.7k
So our expected donate-able income is around $28,700.
The tax legislation is a reduction on the actual donation here, not just income, so you get back 45% of your donation! This means the tax benefit gets better and better the higher you earn, which is nice.
The salary cap seems to be rather low however.
Amount going to charities: ~$41.6k/yr
There are tons of big tech companies. Not Zurich or SF levels but it seems okay, lots of startups too.
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
It’s fine!
This post has been very valuable
There’s an EA coworking space called TEAMWORK that has ran for forever and hosts semi-regular events. There’s a yearly EAGx aswell!
And using the LW map as a heuristic, it seems alive!
Apparently there’s an EA group-house too?
You are a bit isolated from the rest of europe but it really isn’t all that bad. Travel is cheap since you’ll make more than most countries.
What’s it like to live there?
I don’t care for clubbing/partying, but if you do, it’s fucking Berlin, so yeah.
It’s unique in so many ways. There’s no place like it, the history is nuts.
Anecdotally: the streets are really dirty (but I find it endearing).
The infrastructure is great, public transport is very good (and a unique and cool 3-tiered system). 78
The city felt pretty car-centric when I was there, biking infrastructure sucks. But it depends where you go.
And it really does depend where you go! Berlin is like a mini country, there’s no “center” to speak of (except maybe Alexanderplatz?).
It feels so alive. My number 1 pick if I had to listen purely to my heart.
I feel like myself in Berlin. Clothes truly have no gender in Berlin, everyone just kinda does whatever, I really like it.
AfD is on the rise, but honestly, I would still feel safer there than America.
Obviously you don’t understand the full nuances of a culture until you live there, but I think I will vibe very well with Berlin culture.
Tons of events too, stuff happens all the time.
Being a vegan in Berlin is fucking amazing. Number 1 for sure. The amount of good, cheap, vegan food is insane.
London
Can I get in?
Maybe!
It’s “get really cracked” again. I would need a sponsorship because of Brexit.
The job market is super-competitive as well in tech atleast.
Donation/career potential?
I sound like a broken record, but the job market in London is super-competitive in tech. But it pays very well and there’s a lot of options for growth. Tons of big US companies have offices in London.
Cost of living is estimated at $46,212
Income you can expect in the bottom 25th percentile is $92,9k.
Effective tax rate is estimated at 30%, so after tax you’ll have $65k
So our expected donate-able income is around $18.8k donate-able. Yikes!
Like the german laws, you can get 20% back of your donation, which is very generous. So:
Amount going to charities: ~$23.5k/yr
It’s also got the most startups in all of Europe
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
Apparently, more alive than even SF! (which almost can’t be right…)
I refer you to this post.
To summarize: there’s a lot of startup energy. A lot of EA/AI safety orgs have offices there.
There’s a yearly EAG and there’s a coworking space.
Using the LW map as a heuristic, it seems only rivaled by Paris and SF!
You are a bit isolated from the rest of europe but flights from the UK to the rest of Europe are generally super cheap.
What’s it like to live there?
Disclaimer: I haven’t been
I don’t know! This part is a stub until my London friends get back to me.
The UK is probably the worst of the bunch right now for being a trans person. I think it gets exaggerated sometimes, because in my experience UK people have been very accepting, but the government does just seem to want to legislate trans people out of existence, and that’s very scary.
Amsterdam
Can I get in?
Almost definitely. Freedom of movement my beloved.
Donation/career potential?
Stats are extra deceptive here, Amsterdam is also known for a very strong finance hub. If you want to go work for a quant, wages will probably be quite a bit higher, keep that in mind. No quant has the title “software engineer”. But I’ll stick to the formula for consistency now.
Cost of living is estimated at $37,416
Income you can expect in the bottom 25th percentile is $86,8k. After dutch tax (estimated 38%): $53.8k.
So our expected donate-able income is around $16.4k
We can deduct up to 10% of our income, which is up to $8,8k here.
Amount going to charities: ~$22.6k/yr
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
Apparently very alive! It scores very high on the EA census.
They have a coworking space and a yearly EAGx.
I guess I’ll see at EAGx there this year :)
Using the LW map as a heuristic, it seems like there was a rationalist genocide or something, it’s literally completely empty. Strange!
Traveling to other parts of Europe is just OK, pretty well connected by rail but awkward position.
What’s it like to live there?
From what I’ve heard it’s pretty nice.
Personally: I think “binnenstad” (city center) is literal hell. It’s Disneyland for UK tourists. Doesn’t feel like the Netherlands or Amsterdam at all. Weed and drunks everywhere, really not a fan.
The further you get from the center the nicer it gets honestly.
Obvious point: dutch is my first language. Normally this would matter a whole bunch but English fluency rate in the Netherlands is so high it’s not even funny. It would mean 100% overlap with language, which will obviously be handy for navigation/road signs etc. But I don’t actually care that much, since I would love to learn some german anyway.
The situation for a trans person is OK, like the rest of Europe. Government is relatively stable although they did have a far right PM recently which is scary. Luckily he got voted out.
Walkability nuke. Bikes. Bikes everywhere. It’s so awesome. Apparently people find biking in Amsterdam very overwhelming, but to me it just felt like Belgium but better.
The culture is quite close to the same I’m used to in Belgium, except apparently way more direct and honest, which sounds nice but also “more of the same” which I wouldn’t like.
Being a vegan in Amsterdam is pretty damn great. Only Berlin does better IMO.
I don’t have friends in Amsterdam though, not close ones at least.
Paris
waow. eiffel tower…
Can I get in?
Yes, freedom of movement
Donation/career potential?
I think the stats here are a little fucky, the compensation is for “greater paris area” and the cost of living is for “Paris”. So probably it’s less bad than it looks
Cost of living is estimated at $30,204
Income you can expect in the bottom 25th percentile is $55,9k. French tax is estimated at 28%, so after-tax income is $40.2k
So our expected donate-able income is around $10,2k
The tax deduction situation in France is incredible. You can deduct 66% of your donation up to a cap of 20% of gross income, you will hit this cap, so let’s just go with 20% of gross income, which means an $11.18k boost!
Amount going to charities: ~$21.38k/yr
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
From what I hear from Lucie, it’s very alive. She knows tons of rationalists and I think they even had a group-house-situation going.
Pros: you get to live in literal paris
Cons: it’s paris, and it’s not like in the ads.
From what I’ve heard, Paris nord is just so dangerous that you cannot go there after dark or you might get robbed. I don’t know how true this is but that’s a pretty big downside for me, I don’t like that.
What’s it like to live there?
stub until Lucie get’s back to me
Ghent
If you’re just here for the info and don’t care about me, feel free to skip this one
Okay… Why the fuck is this here?
Listen up okay. It’s where I currently live, I know it very well
I have a bias towards action. If there’s a life lesson League Of Legends has taught me: Sometimes the best play is to do nothing. I will probably be able to not pay rent here, since my parents built an apartment complex here.
Can I get in?
I’m literally already here.
Donation/career potential?
Here I get to pick from the “without rent” row. Yay.9
Okay so this one is quite interesting. Belgium wages are really low. Partially because of our highest income tax burden in all of Europe (possibly the world! although I couldn’t find an exact source on that) and other weird salary negotiation policies.
But uhm! No rent!
AND donations are 45% tax-deductible. So maybe, just maybe, it might be OK for earning to give.
Cost of living is estimated at a measly $10,284
Income you can expect in the bottom 25th percentile is $47,3k. I know the Belgian tax system quite well, no estimates this time, the effective tax rate here is 45,68% (I hate it here) so that comes out to $25.6k
So our expected donate-able income is around $15,4k
Tax deduction laws are awesome though! we get to deduct 45% of our donation on taxes, just like Germany.10
Again, multiplier effects here, which I won’t get into, but it’s a pro for Belgium!
We get a boost of around $7k
Amount going to charities: ~$22.4k/yr
How strong is the EA/rationalist community in the area?
Completely dead. You can get to Brussels though and there you can find like, 3 people? LW map has some people from Leuven…
What’s it like living there?
It’s safe, it’s comfortable. It’s home…
If I didn’t care about money or adventure, there is literally no reason to leave.
The public transport is great, the city is walkable and beautiful.
Crime rates are low, the infrastructure is great (okay, maybe not our roads)
It feels very safe for trans people. I’ve never felt unsafe in Ghent, except for the obvious “walking home late at night” thing. Even then I’ve never gotten shit for it. I know some gay friends who apparently got chased though.
The political situation in Belgium is insane but stable in a way only a fucking Belgian would call stable. Our “conservative” party wants Flemish independence, is abundance-pilled and is at pride. Belgium is not a nation!
But, nothing ever happens in Ghent! The people (at uni) here seem incredibly low-ambition. So seem most adults honestly. There’s a startup I will likely intern at that will maybe change my mind on this.
I just viscerally feel that my future isn’t here. Ghent is the cradle I must leave, and when everything falls apart, it’s where I will return.
In a lot of ways it’s my one and only: the city of light and love <3.
Conclusion & caveats
Know that I haven’t lived in any place that’s not Ghent. I won’t know what it’s like, so in a lot of ways a lot of this data is useless. No plan survives contact with reality. I have visited most, and have added disclaimers when I haven’t.
Know that this is all analyses over averages, you may be able to find something really good if you just mass-apply all over Europe and don’t care where you end up.
Know that a lot of companies do donation doubling and that taxes are very complicated.
I plan to visit my main contenders more, and I advise you to do the same. Choosing a city is a big step, it’s like a relationship except even more commitment! When you’re settled in, it’s hard to leave. Choose carefully.
That being said, here’s a cute little table for the expected donation data.
So let’s rank them in the most objective way I can, I’ll value all of my criteria equally and see what ends up winning (know that the third criteria here is my subjective judgement):
I should really try to get into SF. But for the reasons listed it seems almost impossible.
May the dems change the H1B legislation soon, inshallah.
Berlin also comes out looking way stronger than I initially thought.
So I think that, until presented with new information: my new (realistic) plan is try to get into Zurich, failing that get into Berlin
I fear however that all the 5 thousand words and charts in the world will get trumped by a simple reality: Zurich is where my best friends are. And that makes me especially scared of Berlin too, because I know no one there. But scary is okay.
In any case: I should start learning German…
for the one reader here who remembers the old name of Bentham Bulldog’s blog.
This is so bad that one of my Zurich friends who I would consider very “good” at what they do told me that their professional goal is to “try to get a job that makes sure they can stay in the city”
The law is weird and complicated. Reading up on it it seems not to be as big a deal as I thought
mind you, this document is designed for students.
If you’re registered as religious and don’t wish do donate to churches when you arrive (mandated!) make sure you un-register yourself
if I get in I will try to fix this
the S-bahn runs on 750V DC. That is not okay.
The BVG announcer is a trans woman ^^
also before you say it no there’s no opportunity cost because my parents wouldn’t donate the profits from renting yadee yada
nuance: only to eligible charities, and most aren’t eligible. But some person in belgium created a charity that donates to the effective charities, and that one is eligible, but last I checked they took a 5% cut.
> I know the Belgian tax system quite well, no estimates this time, the effective tax rate here is 45,68%
Is that why eurocrat salaries don’t incur taxes? Because otherwise they’d find a way to move the capital out of Belgium?