Yes, you're missing the fact that it's Russia, not SV. Couple of years ago ruble's exchange rates dropped significantly (it was ~33RUR for USD, now it's 64-65

Yes, you're missing the fact that it's Russia, not SV. Couple of years ago ruble's exchange rates dropped significantly (it was ~33RUR for USD, now it's 64-65 rubles). Monthly salaries for a good engineer in Moscow are usually 100-200k rubles, or 1.2-2.4M rubles/year. It's only $18-36k per year. Looks insane from typical californian HR's point of view, isn't it? Taxes take additional ~50% (in Russia, employer pays all the taxes and payments to the pension fund), so $500k was a pretty good estimate.