We Still Talk About Career Decisions as Though Salary Buys the Same Life Everywhere

I was boarding a flight from Porto to Luxembourg when I noticed someone looking at me from their seat.

Our eyes met, and for a moment we both seemed to be trying to place the other. Then they smiled.

“Zach?!”

I recognised them immediately. We'd spoken recently about their plans to move from Canada to Luxembourg, potentially a couple of years from now. I was on my way home, and they were returning from a holiday during which they'd made a deliberate detour to visit the country they hoped to call home one day.

I shook their hand, conscious of the passengers still trying to board behind me, and suggested we catch up once we landed. Unfortunately, they had a tram to catch and I was among the last people off the plane, so that was the extent of our reunion.

It felt like a very Luxembourg moment.

Living in a small country, you become accustomed to crossing paths with people in unexpected places. At the supermarket, in a park with your children, or at the airport. But this was hardly an ordinary coincidence.

Here was someone I'd only recently met, flying between the same two cities as me while actively exploring the possibility of building a future in Luxembourg.

I couldn't help smiling at the absurdity of it.

When we'd first spoken, this professional had explained that they weren't really looking for a job yet.

They have an established career in finance in Canada, but increasingly feel drawn toward Europe, where they'd like to spend the next chapter of their working life and perhaps eventually retire.

They've been thinking about it for years.

Luxembourg appeals to them for its international character, its languages, its location and the possibility of continuing to work in an interesting professional environment. But they're also realistic about the challenge. Their expertise in financial planning and analysis doesn't necessarily match the vacancies that dominate Luxembourg's finance job boards.

So they're giving themselves time.

They're reading local business news, getting to know recruiters, building professional relationships and researching the market before they need to apply for anything. Their short visit to Luxembourg was another way of testing whether the place they'd been imagining was somewhere they'd actually enjoy living.

At one point during our conversation, they said something that stayed with me:

“I'd rather live with the consequences than with the regrets.”

I understood what they meant. They don't want to look back years from now and wonder what might have happened if they'd seriously explored the possibility of moving.

Their career matters, of course. They'll need a suitable job to make the move sustainable. But they're not chasing their next promotion or trying to maximise their salary.

They've started with a more personal question about where they want to spend the coming years. The professional challenge is figuring out how to make that life possible.

It's a useful reminder for recruiters, because we often approach relocation the other way around.

Back in September, I asked some Canadian friends whether they'd seriously consider moving to Europe if they had the opportunity.

One replied almost immediately that they'd be interested if I could find them a high-paying job.

I laughed, partly because it's such a reasonable response, and partly because it was exactly the conversation I wanted to have.

What does high-paying actually mean when you're comparing two completely different places?

Someone earning $150,000 in Canada might look at an €80,000 opportunity in Luxembourg and see an obvious pay cut. Depending on taxes, benefits and individual circumstances, it very well could be.

But the numbers don't tell us everything about the lives behind them.

In Canada, a comfortable lifestyle might mean a detached house in the suburbs, two cars, plenty of space and perhaps a cottage for weekends away. In Luxembourg, it might mean living in an apartment, walking to shops and restaurants, relying on public transport and having several countries within easy reach.

Neither version is inherently better.

Europe isn't some paradise where everyone works shorter hours and spends their afternoons on a terrace. Housing in Luxembourg is expensive, taxes can be significant, and plenty of people struggle with their own cost-of-living pressures.

Nor is everyone in North America living in a large house with two cars.

But once we start discussing the life someone wants, rather than simply the salary they expect, the conversation becomes considerably more interesting.

I've seen that in my work with families considering relocation, too.

I once supported a couple whose reasons for wanting to leave the United States had very little to do with career advancement. They worried about their children's safety at school and wanted to live somewhere where cycling could become a normal part of everyday transportation rather than depending on a car for almost everything.

Those were their priorities. A higher salary wasn't going to answer the questions that mattered most to them.

And that's why I think no assumption about someone's motivation to move countries is safe.

The finance professional I met on the plane is at a very different stage of life from that family. They're drawn to Europe for different reasons. Yet both are trying to understand whether another place could offer something their current circumstances don't.

A recruiter who focuses only on professional ambition and compensation risks missing the very thing driving the decision.

On Friday, I arrived back in Canada myself, nearly a decade after first moving to Luxembourg.

A friend picked us up at Montréal airport. Their home was only about fifteen kilometres away, but Friday afternoon traffic turned that short distance into a journey of roughly an hour.

What makes this particularly interesting is that these friends moved from Luxembourg to Canada six years ago. They've just received their Canadian citizenship.

So there I was, returning to visit the country I'd left, being welcomed by friends who'd made the journey in the opposite direction and were now officially Canadian.

And only recently, I'd met someone on a plane who was considering leaving Canada to build a future in Luxembourg.

I couldn't help appreciating the irony.

Our friends have built a life in Montréal, and one of the things they showed us was the lane behind their home, where neighbourhood children regularly play together. Some are much older than their young son, but they include him anyway. This autumn, they've been raking leaves into piles and jumping into them.

I immediately thought of my own childhood.

My parents and sister live close to one another, and their neighbourhood has much the same feeling. Children gather in one another's yards, play sports and move between houses with a familiarity that I remember well.

There are communities like this in Luxembourg, too, and we've been fortunate to build relationships there. But in my experience, that particular kind of spontaneous neighbourhood life has taken more effort to find and nurture.

Meanwhile, my family lives in an apartment in Luxembourg City. We have less space than many of our friends in Canada, but I can walk out our front door and be in the middle of a European capital. Our son is growing up surrounded by different languages and nationalities, and travelling somewhere new often requires surprisingly little planning.

I value that enormously.

Our friends have chosen to build their future in Canada. We've chosen Luxembourg. And another professional is now considering the journey back across the Atlantic.

It's a reminder that the same two countries can represent very different opportunities depending on who's making the decision and what matters to them.

I'm only three days into a two-week holiday in Canada, so I don't feel particularly qualified to draw a grand conclusion about which country offers a better life.

I'm not sure such a conclusion would be useful anyway.

The professional I met on the plane is carefully considering a move in one direction. I've spent years building a life in the other. A family concerned about their children's safety will make a different calculation from someone thinking about where to spend the final years of their career.

We can compare salaries, taxes, housing costs and transport systems. We should. Those things have real consequences, and it would be irresponsible to ignore them.

But they can only tell us so much.

The more interesting question is what someone hopes their life will look like once the practicalities have been worked out.

That's why, when someone tells me they want to move abroad, I'm increasingly interested in understanding why before we get too far into the job search.

And as I spend the next couple of weeks back in the country where I grew up, I'm finding myself asking some of those same questions about the choices I've made.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Sincerely. I’m grateful you’re here.

If anything made you think, react, or question, let me know by responding directly to the email.

Until next time 🍁