We usually hear that it's London or Zurich due to high salaries being available there, but the high cost of living might take away a good part of it.
In your experience, which is the best city? Feel free to give your own criteria, be it the weather, culture, ability to navigate in English, etc.
Copenhagen. Best city in Europe (with tough competition from Amsterdam). You can easily live there without a car, rent is not too insane and the people are nice and speak perfect English. Just avoid working at Deloitte, because they treat their newest engineers like disposable garbage.
What's with the Deloitte hate? I don't work there just curious
They are famous for overworking and underpaying their staff, especially newer hires. They promised to improve their "unhealthy, stressful workplace culture" a couple of years back, but nothing has really changed. Lots of articles about it if you Google a bit, and I have personally had a lot of friends from university make the mistake of starting their career in Deloitte, Netcompany or the like.
Thanks for the perspective! It was on my radar, but I didn't really consider it as I would probably struggle with the weather during winter.
Happy to see that you're having a good time!
If you're a Software Engineer, you won't be seeing much of the weather anyway ;)
If you work remotely, then the world is your oyster. There are many small cities with a good mix of what you like. Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Romania, Sweden, Norway, all countries with such cities where you can also speak English. But if you drop the English requirement and are willing to learn the language, then many more countries fit the bill.
A country in Eastern Europe might do well for a high salary and low taxes. There are a few countries that have tax advantages for people who move there and register in the municipality.