I suspect it has to do with a combination of interest (passion) and compensation. When I first entered this industry and earned substantially less I was really

I suspect it has to do with a combination of interest (passion) and compensation. When I first entered this industry and earned substantially less I was really into producing open source and software demos without any hope of receiving a financial reward for it. I wanted to simply produce cool tools, learn improved automation techniques, and become a better developer. I believed that if I became a much better developer I could earn much more years later and also achieve far more interesting work. I had incentive. I still write open source software and I still enjoy it. My personal interest in software is really the only thing that keeps me from burning out. Software developers make a lot of money in the US and Canada. Some areas of software development must work much harder than other areas just to achieve and retain employment. In my area of frontend development with JavaScript there are a lot of jobs that pay well and you don't have to be very good to get them. There is less incentive to really go above and beyond by writing new technologies to do amazing things. In Europe developers make substantially less. There is the potential to make as much as their North American counter-parts but only if they are near the top of their profession. The incentive to self-improve and do cool things is absolutely there, because you have to work harder to earn that higher income. At some point a European developer also has to perform some level of self-reflection if the passion isn't there and realize they could be earning far more money working less hard in a different profession.