Six-Figure Euro Engineer Coaching Program
Six-Figure Euro Engineer Coaching Program
Unlock High-Paying Tech Careers in Europe
In September 2024 I launched a new version of the program. Check out its outline HERE.
TL;DR
I run an exclusive Coaching Program for Software Engineers in Europe willing to bring their career, finances and lifestyle to the next level.
I started it on May 1st, 2024. So far, it has been going very well.
It is exclusive to a limited number of members and is currently sold out.
You can continue reading this article to get more info about the program, and if you’re interested you can apply to enter the waiting list, for when new spots will become available.
Sneak peek on the future version of the program
If you add yourself to the waiting list, you can expect the program to be something like this:
Price will be between 500 to 1000 euros per month, per person.
We will work on achieving your goals in any of the following:
Help you analyse your current situation and create worthwhile goals.
Knowledge transfer from me to you, based on your specific needs (this would save you thousands of hours of research).
Improve your CV and LinkedIn and make them top-tier and targeted to your job search goals and strategy.
Improve your interview skills to make you capable of getting the offers you deserve.
Access to my personal network to learn from people that are steps ahead in your journey.
Help you land interviews: I can get you referred to every big tech company (if I think you’re a good fit), in addition to putting you in contact with recruiters for high-paying jobs in Switzerland, as well as helping you land interviews at high-paying remote companies..
Give you niche and hard-to-find knowledge around geo-arbitrage in Europe: where it’s worth living, taxing and getting paid as a dev in Europe in 2024—based on your personal lifestyle preferences and needs.
You will get access to a Telegram group to chat with the other participants.
You will have the possibility to text me on a daily basis.
You will have two 45 minutes 1:1 call with me every month.
You will have one 1 hour group call with me and the other members of the program every month.
What people are saying
Checkout what people are saying about the program at this page.
In the meantime
You can subscribe for free here and check all the free content I put out every week.
You can also get access to a 4000+ jobs list I update every week with the top jobs in Europe for devs right now. Learn more here.
How to apply to join the waiting list
Send me an email at theeuropeanengineer@gmail.com with your goals with the program, your budget, and your skills. Attach your CV, a screenshot to your LeetCode profile, your LinkedIn. Tell me how you plan to pay for the program (savings? monthly income?). If I don’t reply to the email, text me on LinkedIn.
I think new spots will become available around September/October/November 2024.
Back to the original post from April 2024
When I asked you guys how many of you were interested in a coaching program, about 40 of you said that you were.
Since it is something I have been preparing to launch since some time now, I think we might be ready for its first iteration.
Six-Figure Euro Engineer - What is it about?
My background
Intro - Choosing a career in IT
In the last 10+ years, since I’ve enrolled in my bachelor of Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan, I have been studying the European landscape for Tech opportunities.
I chose a bachelor which was broad enough - Automation & Control Engineering- to let me explore different STEM areas and see which ones had more potential: Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Mathematical Modelling, Industrial Engineering and Management.
During this time, I started to see how the Software Engineering and Machine Learning worlds were the ones that seemed more promising.
Careers in these fields were the ones with the highest salaries among all STEM careers, as well as having many other benefits such as:
Growing industries: Companies in these fields are generally newer and ‘younger’, and tend to have better cultures than companies in old school industries, as well as being the fastest growing (and, nowadays, biggest) companies in the world. This means more and better opportunities.
More demand and less supply of skilled workers: Since these industries are inherently newer, there are less senior people with decades of experience in these fields compared to other STEM areas. Today this has been adjusted a bit, but it’s still the best STEM field for finding a job.
Location: Companies in IT tend to have their offices in trendy cities, unlike jobs in more “heavy” engineering industries which can be in remote towns in industrial Germany, for example. This for me was appealing as I also want to have a good city lifestyle.
Remote-friendly: I wasn’t thinking too much about remote when starting out, but I have always found appealing that I could technically only need my laptop to work in these fields. And being able to perform this work from anywhere in the world is also a huge bonus these fields offer IMO.
Bachelor of Science (BSc) days - Realising university wasn’t enough
As soon as I decided to start planning a fulfilling career in IT, I encountered many difficulties and little support.
I remember being a 2nd year BSc student, 20 years old, looking online for answers.
I would see how Software Engineers in California had it great: 6 figures salaries, cool offices, free food, building great skills in future-proof areas, working on cool products and services on their fancy MacBook, etc.
I wanted it too.
In my proximity, no-one who really knew much about this.
My colleagues from uni were completely alienated from the working world, as well as knowing nothing about what life outside of Milan and Italy was like.
They just focused on preparing the exams, knowing that after 5 years of university (BSc + MSc) employers would kill to hire them, as graduates from the top engineering school in Italy.
My sister, 10 years older than me, also an engineering graduate from that same uni, warned me that the working world in Italy sucked, as salaries were very low: 1.5k, 2k, 3k eur/month for experienced engineers.
She had just moved to Zurich to live and work there (we’re talking about 2014/2015) and told me that salaries over there were much better, with engineers making more than 5k/6k per month.
She also recommended me to start checking out the career pages on companies’ websites, to get an idea of what was required by the market.
I started to think that just preparing for my exams in the hopes of some miracle after graduation wasn’t enough.
University Career Services were useless
I knew that I couldn’t spend all my time just focusing on studying for the exams, so I started checking companies’ career pages.
I would go to Google’s career page, Netflix’ career page, Facebook’s career page, etc.
Most jobs were for Software Engineers (reinforcing my idea that I had to adjust my study trajectory to something more software or math related, moving away from mechanical/electrical engineering).
Moreover, my “personal tragedy” started to rollout: ALMOST ALL OF THESE JOBS WERE IN THE USA.
It was very easy to realise that in Milan there was no good job in IT.
It was also easy to realise that even in the entire Europe there weren’t that many good IT jobs.
The only company I remember that gave me some “hope” around having a good career in IT in Europe was Spotify. God bless Daniel Ek 🙏
As a 20 years old engineering student coming from a small town in Italy, with big hopes about the tech world from having read Steve Jobs’ famous book in high school and Business Insider reports about great conditions for engineers in California, and delusions after realising that my BSc wasn’t gonna really offer me the career I wanted, I went straight to my university’s career service.
In case you’re not familiar with it: a university’s career service is a university facility/office where they help students learn about the job market, find internships and full-time job opportunities.
I was in the best engineering school in Italy, I was sure they were going to help me big time.
So I entered their office and told them exactly these words: “I want to get a programmer job at either Google or Spotify, can you help me?”.
I will never forget how shitty I felt after the woman working there looked at me like I asked her about some arcane sorcery.
She said: “we had some graduates that landed such jobs, but I don’t think they are so easy to get”.
That’s it. This was her response.
Since I’m a very stubborn person, I bombarded her with questions until I squeezed out all she knew about the topic. Which wasn’t much.
Basically the only data point I got from her was that maybe studying Computer Engineering would be better to get such jobs, although probably my degree would be fine too.
…
10 years of studying the European Tech market
I enrolled in my bachelor in September 2013. Today it’s April 2024.
That’s more than 10 years.
In these 10 years, I had to learn, step by step by step by step by step, all the things that I think that woman in the Career Service should have known (and more, of course).
I learned about how American companies operate, where they hire, who they hire, how they hire, when, why, etc.
I learned about which companies are good and which are not, be it American or non-American.
I learned about which opportunities I had access to, with my European passport.
I studied extensively the market in Europe to understand which cities and countries were worth looking into, which companies had offices in which cities, which projects they had in that city, etc.
I’ve networked with people everywhere in Europe working at any type of company.
If I need to apply to a job, I now know at least someone at almost every big tech company who can refer me, for example.
I learned that the only way in Europe to get the same conditions as engineers in California was to work in big tech in Zurich.
I now know everything about the big tech market in Zurich: company by company, I know what projects they have, which profiles they hire, how many people are in that office, and so on.
I also learned of some upsides that you might have by living in Europe: for example, the fact that with short flights you can move around different places quite easily, and that there are a lot of opportunities for geo-arbitrage (basically leveraging conditions from where you are based, by carrying out some “business” in nearby places).
For example: being based in Zurich and spending the weekend in Eastern Europe, Turkey, or Southern Europe and getting an amazing lifestyle there with supreme purchase power, or being able to leverage a salary from higher income countries to get a favourable mortgage for a real estate investment in another “poorer” country.
I learned that some countries offered some upsides and others offered other upsides: Scandinavian countries will give you the best work-life balance and security, Central/Eastern European countries will give you the best salary/cost-of-living ratio and standard of living, Switzerland and Netherlands will give you the best opportunities for growing your wealth quickly.
2 ways to make money in Europe as a programmer: the “Six-Figure Euro Engineer” idea.
As I mentioned in this article on how to get 100k as a dev in Europe, there are 2 main ways to go about making money in Europe as a dev:
Optimise location;
Optimise company.
If we are talking about optimising locations, Switzerland is the obvious choice: you can get 100k salaries there as a junior working in a regular (decent) company, and 130k-150k as a senior.
In big tech there, you can make much more (150k-600k for people under 10 years of experience). But it’s very competitive.
If you want to optimise company, targeting Big Tech companies (those paying top tier salaries, like FAANG companies) is the way: there are enough big tech jobs in Europe to make this a very achievable goal, if you’re open to relocate wherever you get the offer. Note that anywhere you would get this offer, you would automatically be part of the upper-class of that location, even as a junior engineer. You would also have good saving opportunities pretty much anywhere in Europe working in big tech: check codecapitals.com for the exact numbers.
Why I am very qualified when it comes to pursuing both these strategies
I got my first job in Switzerland in 2018, straight out an engineering BSc, for 80k CHF (about 85k-90k USD).
I then got a big tech job at Amazon in 2021, in Barcelona.
By 2021, I had done interviews - in many cases receiving an offer, in most cases reaching the final step of the interview process- in many top company/location combos in Europe: Airbnb Paris, Uber Amsterdam, Databricks Amsterdam, Microsoft Tallinn, Google Zurich, Adobe Basel, Bloomberg London, Apple London, and others that I can’t remember now.
As well as having interviewed for many companies in Zurich, getting an offer in a lot of cases.
Ultimately I also got the Oracle Zurich job, which is one of those jobs that combine top location with top company, and in some way it’s the “holy grail” of software jobs in Europe.
To sum up, I have had:
3 6-figure jobs in Switzerland;
2 big tech jobs in Europe.
So I think I’m quite qualified to teach how to pursue these two job search strategies in Europe.
You can double check my profile on Linkedin to look at my career path.
Back to the Career Service
Not having a proper Career Service at the university kind of forced me to become a Career Service myself.
In fact, I think the goal of a career service should be to only recommend you what you need to know in your specific case, based on their extensive knowledge of all possible paths and needed requirements for each path.
Not having such a “directional machine”, I had to learn about almost all the paths that were possible, in order to find which one was most suited for me.
This was extremely inefficient.
Took me 5 years of careers to achieve what it could’ve taken me 2 or 3 years if I had a proper mentorship, 10 years to achieve what I could have done in 5.
On the flip side, I’ve gathered a lot of knowledge that could be very useful for people out there. And of course, I wondered about what to do with this knowledge.
That’s why I started this newsletter and started posting on Linkedin.
Creating quality content takes a lot of time. Effort should be rewarded. So I can’t be doing this professionally entirely for free, forever.
Maybe I can monetise this effort. Who knows… If I really have something that the market needs, I could make this a full-time job at some point, or turn it into a business.
A private Career Service
My idea is to be some kind of private Career Service.
Since I realised that a proper Career Service is at least as important as the technical things that you study in university (I would argue quite a bit more, in fact), there should be a way to get this service at a high quality level, and not that shitty, useless thing that they give you in most universities in Europe.
Note: a good career service would also be able to tell you WHAT you need to study, and WHERE to study it with great efficiency.
Maybe you don’t a MSc degree, maybe you don’t need to pay 10k or 20k for a private school to get access to their “network”, maybe you don’t need to spend 3k/4k every month in living expenses studying at ETH Zurich in order to get a job there, maybe you don’t need to work hard to get top grades at your school.
Smart work beats hard work.
Knowing how to leverage your resources (money, time, energy) to get the most out of them is the main driver for your career (and to some extent even life) success/satisfaction.
The business proposal
After all this talk 🙂, finally we get to the meat of the offer.
I am opening a Coaching program called “Six-Figure Euro Engineer”, structured like this:
Coaching and not mentorship: coaching means that there is a clear goal that is either met or not met, in this case the goal is to get a six-figure job in Europe.
How I am defining a six-figure job: a job that is either in big tech (or big tech equivalent) or in a high paying location like Switzerland. Note, in the first case, the job might pay less than 6 figures. For example: if you get an offer for a big tech company in Bucharest as a junior dev, you’ll be making less than 100k euros, maybe you’ll be making 50k-80k euros. I still call this a six-figure job. Because come on… 50k-80k in Bucharest… means you could live in a 100 m2 apartment with a maid and a chef, if you wanted. Moreover, after a couple of years in big tech in any city in Europe, you’ll anyway pass the actual 100k compensation threshold.
Schedule and program:
2 one on one, 45 minutes-long calls with me every month: Here you get the customised advice specifically tailored to you. We analyse your situation, what are your strength points, what are your goals, what are your resources. This is done in an holistic matter: what do you want out of life, how your career can enable you to get that, what type of cities and lifestyle you could like, are you single or married with a family, are you in your early 20s, late 20s, 30s, 40s, do you come from a top-tier school or a bootcamp, are you a computer genius or are you trying to pivot into the field, etc etc. We would discuss this in a bi-weekly 45 minutes 1:1 call.
1 60 minutes group call with me and all the participants every month: Here you can still get advice from me and give me a status update, while also looking at other participants and learning from their stories and their progress and plans. It can also be a way to network with likeminded people.
Access to Telegram group with me and the other participants: We will have a private group chat for day-to-day communications and info sharing, with both participants and me in it. I will share here interesting things I see, jobs openings, good articles, learning resources, CV templates and so on. And you can get your short questions answered there, from either me or any of the other participants. I hope this would also be a good way for the participants to network among themselves and maybe organise interview prep sessions etc.
Only 5 spots: For now, I am limiting this program to just 5 people. This ensures that I can guarantee a high quality service while having time for creating free content for the newsletter, and thinking of how to improve the program itself. Later on I might open it to other people: I don’t know if, when, and for which price, so no guarantee about this as of now.
Timeline: I will offer a monthly subscription service, that you can cancel at any point in case you don’t need it anymore or you don’t like it. You will need to pay the first month when you sign up, and then the monthly fee on a recurring monthly basis: when you cancel, you’ll stop getting charged. To set the right expectations: I think this service makes sense if you’re planning to stick with it for a few months at least. Careers take time, and interview loop’s timelines (time from sending the CV to getting an offer) range from a couple of months to half a year or more.
Selection: You can’t just pay and register. You will need to send an application, with your CV, explaining your situation and goals, and tell me how you think I will be able to help you. My goal here is to take people who are likely to achieve a result, and help them increase their chances of achieving it. I don’t want to coach someone who I don’t think has good chances of achieving much, and then have them complain with me about how my service didn’t help them. I am not a magician. I can’t do the work for you. I want to help you, only if I know that I CAN actually help you, given your situation.
Price: The price will be 500 EUR per month (edit: price might have gone up since this article came out). I think this is a very reasonable price. Think of it this way: let’s say you stick with me for 6 months, that’s 3k USD of costs. Let’s say I help you move from your 30k-50k job to a 80k-120k job in 6 months instead of 2 years (in case you were to go about it by yourself). Let’s say 80k-120k minus 30k-50k is about 60k. Let’s imagine that after taxes this would be 40k. Getting these 40k gains for 1.5 additional years, would mean gaining 60k, thanks to this mentorship that costed you 3k. Even if you had to move to a more expensive country to get this higher salary and this country were to cost you 2k more per month in living expenses, for 1.5 years (18 months), that’s 36k of additional costs. 60k - 36k = 24k. Even in this case, you would be turning 3k to 24k. That’s a pretty high ROI 😂. Even if you increased the living costs of 3k, that’s still 60k - 54k = 6k, meaning a 100% ROI on your 3k.
Examples of people I can help:
You are a STEM student and want to get a great job in IT in Europe: I can be your private, high-quality Career Service.
You are working as a Software Engineer and saving less than 20k/30k per year, while not living a luxurious lifestyle → I can help you get a better job to either increase your lifestyle or your saving rate, ideally both.
You want to pivot to Software Engineering coming from another field → I had to do this myself when I moved from my Automation & Control Engineering to Computer Science and Software Engineering: I can tell you what are the best and most efficient ways to go about it in your specific situation.
You want to relocate to Europe → maybe you are a Software Engineer in another continent and are looking for ways to move and work in Europe, or you are a student living abroad or a professional in another field living abroad and want access to the best information about how and where to move to in Europe to work in IT.
Check testimonials of people who have attended the program.
Next Steps
If you are not interested, no problem at all. I know this program is not for everyone, both because of its price point and because people might be at different points in their life and might have different needs at different times.
I will continue to publish free content here and on LinkedIn such that I will continue to help everyone, regardless of if I am coaching them or not.
If you are interested and think this program could be helpful for you, reply to this email or send me an email to theeuropeanengineer@gmail.com with these info:
Mid-length description of yourself: your bio, your current situation, your goals, what you think I can help you with.
CV + LinkedIn profile.
LeetCode page screenshot or equivalent, in case you want to target big tech companies and have already started prepping.
Info about how you plan to finance this program and for how many months you expect to be using it.
The End
Phewww! That’s it folks.
Have a good rest of the day!
