Agree with this. Where people gravitate to in terms of career choices is very much driven by compensation patterns, and somehow, in (Western) Europe, being on t

Agree with this. Where people gravitate to in terms of career choices is very much driven by compensation patterns, and somehow, in (Western) Europe, being on the technical side of tech/IT just does not pay. Large companies (those that are not tech-centric, e.g. financial services, etc) still tend to see it as a back office function and often outsources majority of operations to India (or fly and settle temporary employees locally). Companies that places tech at the center of their business recruit and hire a lot of tech talent from outside of Western Europe. There are also local developers, but their pay, compared to jobs in, say, marketing, sales, and other rather fluffy business functions, is low, low, low. Someone mentioned Bookings before. Their pay is on-par with the market average here, which is 50-80K. And that is very low compared to how a similar position is valued in SV. Startups here in general also underpay their tech workers compared to counterparts in the US, since they point to the large companies locally (which already underpay tech roles), and say, "well, we can't afford corporate pay, we are just a startup". So you are kind of double-underpaid, even though the job descriptions are usually copy and pasted SV-speak with rainbows and unicorns.