The safety net argument has no legs. Australia and Canada both have social benefits that far exceed the majority of EU nations, yet pre-pandemic there was no shortage of $150k+ dev roles.
Zurich is.
> And I have colleagues who make £450k+
Just as there are American devs pocketing 7 figures annually. Again, the number of European devs making >$100k is a fraction of a percent. You can be making $100k in the US after a 6 month bootcamp or in AU/CA with a couple of years experience.
I doubt that $100k is the 99th percentile for London developers, maybe it is for European in general.
I promise you, the market for developers does not top out at anywhere near $100k.
That's closer to a starting salary (assuming a university degree).
London finance attracts a crowd that I had very little in common with. To be honest I only interviewed to see what it was like. It wasn't for me.
Mainly worked with high traffic Ruby apps but also done production C and Rust. Side interests in VMs and compilers.
These positions exist if you're good, experienced and most of all, not a complete asshole.