It’s mostly just because salaries are very high in the US due to the huge amount of money flowing into startups via VCs to accelerate growth. That growth comes from hiring a lot of devs, increasing demand. And few of those startups will accept juniors or folks fresh out of school, because they don’t have the resources to train them. That limits supply.
And on top of that, you have the American tech giants with huge sums of money competing in that same market. And many of these tech companies were founded by engineers and have a very engineering-first perspective, increasing the importance of treating developers well at some level.
So at the end of the day, you get a market with lots of opportunities, fewer experienced devs interested in those opportunities, and lots of money earmarked for attracting those devs.
It’s pretty unique, and I don’t think this scenario really exists in Europe.
Heads up as we see more and more people in EU hired directly by US companies remotely.
Wages are steadily moving up in EU even if they are still lower than SV.
Though I think for US dev it would make more sense to move to lower cost state than to EU because I kind of imagine EU costs of living might still be higher than many places in US. Especially if one would move to NL/Germany/Belgium/France/Italy - if one would be moving to Romania/Poland/Hungary/Czechia could be also quite cheap but I don't think these are the countries typical US dev would have in mind :)
And on top of that, you have the American tech giants with huge sums of money competing in that same market. And many of these tech companies were founded by engineers and have a very engineering-first perspective, increasing the importance of treating developers well at some level.
So at the end of the day, you get a market with lots of opportunities, fewer experienced devs interested in those opportunities, and lots of money earmarked for attracting those devs.
It’s pretty unique, and I don’t think this scenario really exists in Europe.