lvice

My understanding is that the diagnoses are eventually right, but they take a lot of trial and error. You would not be modelling the flawed diagnostic if you take the final result of the trial and error process.

Surely if someone is interested in the topic of "how to become a hacker", it shows the kind of curiosity that you are talking about.

PS: Congratulations? How is this relevant, gate-keeping aside?

> but they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world

Sure they can, but the Silicon Valley has an immense human capital in skills, talent and knowledge that you can't find easily in the rest of the world. The type of complexity, the scale of the systems and the engineering culture that you can find in SF is not common around the world. My experience as a developer in an European country is that it is really difficult to encounter engineers with a real experience in developing truly complex systems and companies with true engineering cultures. This is simply due to the fact that the majority of the companies that need that high quality of engineering and are willing/capable to pay for it are based in the Bay area, therefore creating an ecosystem that is unique in the world. Of course there are a lot of exceptions, but I don't think the "they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world" is as easy at it may look.

I work in one of the companies you mentioned in Italy and, although it's true what you said, the rate paid by the customer still is around 350-550 Euro/day, which is $46-$73/hr, and these are the rates at top tier consultancy companies. $80/hr average still seems very high to me.

Hourly rates seem very off for Italy as well, as the real average is much much lower to the declared $80/hr (web&software). It is especially suspicious that France ($64/hr) and Germany ($55/hr) have a much lower hourly rate, when in reality salaries and rates in these countries are at least 20-30% higher than Italy.