Really don't understand this logic. .. Very few engineers make 9k in Germany, simple. Why compare net wages to gross wages?

There is nothing that says those 11K include ancillary costs. It's called salary, so compare to salary, not to salary + ancillary costs.

True, and in many (oldschool) companies, it is easier to book a workshop for $10k than give a donation of $5k.

Of course, the drawback is that the project would need even more devs to compensate for the time giving workshops, so IDK whether it would work out in the end.

The salary is high for Europe, but not outlandish. I come within 15% working in IT in old industry but without leading a huge project and managing people, cooperation and giving talks. So, no, they should not pay much less even if the contributors probably have their dream job in contrast to me.

That's how much is needed to be paid for getting people to do unethical work. It is not directly comparable to working on a compiler used by many people.

At 20k USD / month, you are either incredibly good and/or lucky or you are not saying that you are working in Switzerland, in which case you forgot to say that your cost of living is higher than SV and you have no public health insurance. (but 20k/month is comfortable anyway, even in Switzerland)

There are plenty of contractors in India making $8-10k a month so there must be thousands in EU making $11k a month or more due to proximity and language advantage.

Check freelancing sites to get some idea. Plenty of guys getting long term work at $60-$80 an hour.

> never in any eastern European country

A couple of Russian enterprise companies have been sucking up all available Java talent in the last couple of years, with top salaries coming up to a million roubles for non-managers. Salaries in Russia are calculated per month and post-tax (people don't even know how much tax they pay), so it's about $13k per month after tax, and $20k per month before tax. I have also seen a couple of openings for Rust engineers in financial sector promising up to $10k a month (after tax).

Of course, this is a very far outlier from the average rates: senior engineer in Moscow typically takes home $3-5k (after tax, monthly). But it's not 'never'.

Idk, the median salary at Uber dev office in Lithuania (which is in eastern Europe) is ~9k EUR per month (which is 11k $). Granted they don't hire that many people and most other companies pay considerably less but I wouldn't say that this is something unachievable for higher end tech leads working in some companies.

This is the thing I don't think people get. They are treating these devs as though they are just run of the mill when it's highly likely they're very skilled.

The salaries of engineers don't scale that much with success of the product. He can get hired by almost any company, but those companies will pay standard pay for lead developers of a team of 4.

(But also no, his salary is not what bankrupts Babel. It is too low for that.)

London is kind of exceptional because of the high cost of living; everything is more expensive in London.