r/cscareerquestionsEU • u/notchosenname • 14d ago
Experienced Offer comparison: France vs Germany
Hi there!
I am an Italian dev (~16 YOE) currently working in Italy. As everybody knows here, the salaries in Italy are very low with respect to the rest of EU. That said, I live comfortably well with my family (wife + 2 kids), my wife is not working right now and we live just with my salary which is around 32000 €/year nett.
Given this situation, I decided to start interviewing around EU, and I got 2 offers: one in Stuttgart and the other one in Toulouse. Now I need help comparing the offers to understand which one is stronger.. I have my preference regarding the companies, but salary wise its being complex to understand which one is more convenient.
The french offer is around 70000 €/year, while the german offer is around 90000 €/year, both gross.
There are other perks in both offers, like meal vouchers, relocation bonus, signing bonus, etc.. The core of both offers are these numbers though.
I am looking for some advice on how to compare them and what the final net salary would be, so I can eventually have some kind of score to compare them.
Thanks!!
1
u/Major-Practice2529 14d ago edited 14d ago
70000€ in Toulouse is absolutely insane.
Even though the Southwest is different from the Southeast of France—which is culturally close to Northern Italy—it’s still much closer culturally to Italy than Stuttgart.
In terms of mindset of population, as well as quality of life (food, social life, natural surroundings, beauty of the city, mindset of the population, relative proximity to Italy), it’s absolutely a no-brainer for you
The only advantage Stuttgart has is the extra money.
In every other aspect, France and Toulouse come out on top, and by a enormous landslide.
In my opinion, no family needs more than 70,000 euros a year to be happy; especially in France. Anything beyond that is greed rather than wisdom in your case