To be fair, that's also because with US salaries, you get a rate that's adjusted to a much higher cost of living. If you adjust for that, you can get similar sa

To be fair, that's also because with US salaries, you get a rate that's adjusted to a much higher cost of living. If you adjust for that, you can get similar salaries as a programmer in finance or pharma in Germany. I completely agree that overall salaries are lower in Germany even adjusted for cost of living but the insane price levels in SV compared to most parts of Germany skew that even more. The situation is more severe in the UK where central London has similar cost of living as NYC or SV but salaries at a quarter of SV levels outside of finance.