They do hire in Europe but pick expensive locales such as Switzerland, London or Dublin. I can't stop wondering why not open shop in Italy or Spain - wages may be much lower with way higher life quality.
Is it a question of language skills, technical skills, or both?
Makes sense. There is a reason that its high COL
Are you at Facebook? Because local talent doesn't matter as much. It's not like the Dublin or London office relies on local talent. I've had tons of colleagues from Romania move there. And when they get there, there are a ton of folks from India, Ukraine, China, Estonia, whatever, a huge chunk of them freshly arrived from their home countries.
If Facebook would go to Spain and Italy, even in the more expensive cities, salaries would be so huge that they would completely dwarf the higher cost of living compared to the rest of the country. But places like Madrid or Lisbon would still be cheaper than for example, London. And with definitely better weather :-)
My guess is that the language barrier is the killer. Everybody in IT outside of maybe China and Japan learns English so London is kind of easy mode.
Who would move just for the privilege of living in literally sea side resort.
I also think that some developers from Nordic countries will consider, and the rest of Europeans who would like the opportunity working at FAANG.
First, these are just not big cities with a lot of people. They don’t have large labor pools or many companies to choose from like London or Paris or Dublin to start with. It immediately limits the number of locals you can hire without relocation.
Second, many of these locations are not as friendly to immigrants. Either they don’t have existing communities or the visa programs they offer are not friendly to non-EU citizens. It is hard to get Indians to move to Bulgaria when they don’t speak the language, there are few other Indians there, and the govt does not provide visa programs that make it easy. Similarly, even though other EU nationals can work in places like Sofia without a visa, few are interested in this. They either want to go to big markets with all the amenities like Berlin, Paris, Dublin, or they want to stay in their home country. Romanians are not very interested in moving to Lithuania. The best candidates we’d find were Lithuanians who had been working in the US or London who wanted to move back to Lithuania for family reasons but work for a Silicon Valley type company.
This problem was amplified for older workers who had kids or wanted to start a family. They want to know it’s a place they can stay for a while.
Third, often times the govt were just not friendly to tech companies. In Portugal, there were many issues around employees working overtime (at all not just for extra pay), having to give one year notice of layoffs. The business viewed the labor laws as a hassle to do business there. They might put up with it in a market where they can hire a lot, but with the above problems, it made the locations even less attractive.
Also because London is the only European city which everyone in the US has definitely heard of ;)