If you have zero children, USA is better than Europe. With one child, it becomes a toss-up. With two or more children, Europe becomes more and more favourable.
With every additional child in USA you add thousands of dollars per month of expenses. By contrast, every additional child in Europe usually adds only hundreds of dollars per month of expenses.
The extra income from USA gets swallowed up quickly once you have children.
Also now with work remote I think things will change further.
More to the point, it is strong indication that the management at this "well funded and very reputable" company is basically incompetent as far as "managing down" is concerned -- and/or suffers greatly from cognitive dissonance.
Not that that means they shouldn't take the job, of course. Just that they should have no illusions as to what that 300k salary is really paying for, in this particular case.
Which is: for your willingness to keep your mouth shut and pretend you aren't being lied to. And to be slowly but incrementally pushed to an early grave by the 12+ hour work days, and the damage to their mental health and relationships from not being able to make use of a reasonable PTO throughout the year.
But again, no judgements here. If that's an arrangement you think you can put with for a year or two before justly quitting this company and finding another one that offers similar salary but with reasonably sane work conditions -- go for it.
