Two main contributors to this in my experience, and both suggest this is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

Part of it is cultural, in that there is still a widespread perception that software engineers are fungible cogs and that no one could possibly be worth that much more than the average technical worker in any other industry -- they value the contribution like industrial labor. I do a lot of work in Europe and many business people find it inexplicable that any software engineer could be worth a senior manager's wage.

The second part is that while wages are relatively low, the cost of employment is astonishingly high in many European countries. Consequently, the fraction of employment cost that gets delivered to the worker as wages is much smaller, all other things being equal. From an employer's perspective, the employment costs are much closer than the paycheck suggests. The company only cares about employment costs, not wages per se. This is unlikely to change anytime soon because it is a manifestation of the social labor ethos common in Europe.

Me too - though I also am perplexed by the massive "respect for other people's down time" rift too. It always saddened me when people said they'd be on vacation and then details of how to bug them with trivial issues.

That being said, I suppose I'm a little hypocritical because I live in Europe and work remotely for a US company. I was already doing fairly well (not astronomical) by local standards but got a 40% raise by just being normal by US standards.

It makes me wonder why there isn't more entrepreneurship here. Labour is cheap and if you fail you're unlikely to die in a gutter (at least you have health care). Hell, even commutes are better for the most part. It should be easier to start something in Europe than in California, not harder. Maybe I'll give it a shot after naturalization.

We have 1.5 months off (paid). I never work past 5pm and most days not past 4pm (4 is when I get the kinds from school).

I could probably make 50-100% more somewhere else but I’d likely be working much more. What’s the hourly pay difference?

You have to normalise by purchasing power and take the quality of life into account. My 60k salary in Poland gives me similar quality of life like 100k in Denmark and 140k in SF.

But SF in general is such a unique case because of the huge tech market and high cost of living. 70-80k EUR in Berlin get you as far as 150k USD in SF i would imagine. Also very different cultures and socioeconomics in terms of taxes, state welfare etc. It's just hard to compare. But when I see that tech salaries in expensive European cities like London/Stockholm aren't really much better than in Berlin, I am a bit perplexed too to be honest. Most of it has to come down to demand and supply in the end.

There are things like cost of living and social security nets that account for the difference, but even then there's still a gap, albeit smaller. It seems that you do have more purchasing power in the US than in Europe, if you're college- or PhD-educated.

On the flip side: I know a few people who turned down opportunities to go work in the US, or who went there and came back to Europe after a few years. Having not worked outside Europe, I'm always curious about discussing the various pros and cons, and although the pros were fairly obvious (good weather all year long, astronomical salary, etc.), one of the cons listed was invariably "I have to live in the US". Exactly why this was a con changed from person to person, but it was always there, and couldn't be accounted to long distance since countries like Japan or Singapore were fine.

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that there's something intangible (which could probably be best ascribed to 'quality of life', as vague as it sounds) that makes very competent people stay in or go back to Europe, and this limits the brain drain somewhat and maintains competition for lower wages on this side of the Atlantic.

The wage statistics in e.g. Sweden is after a 31.43% "federal" (royal?) pay-roll tax is deducted.

BLS, US median for programmers:

82 240 USD/y

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Engineering Union, Sweden, median for union programmers:

61 416 USD/y, as reported.

80 719 USD/y, including payroll tax.

I believe other European countries could report data in a similar manner. The employer cost is similar.

There's an even bigger rift between startup valuations. Less investment, less value created or employee, lower salaries.

To be fair, Europe and the more able governments are making up some of the gap through grant money. Although this leads to a cottage industry of funneling government money into others pockets, whether it be through companies that help you apply for the grants or just bullshit startups that aren't properly vetted.