Historically the very best software engineers outside the US simply immigrated to the US, joined a Silicon Valley company, and made a good living. The quality o

Historically the very best software engineers outside the US simply immigrated to the US, joined a Silicon Valley company, and made a good living. The quality of those left behind, who didn’t have the same mobility, was on average lower. So companies didn’t have good reason to open an office elsewhere. This was especially true before the Internet, since collaboration was much more difficult. These days there are probably great engineers in many locations, but it takes time for their local tech economy to catch up to locations with concentrations of employers and employees like Silicon Valley. They need employers to open local offices (attracted by cheaper or better talent), and then for competing employers to also do so, in order to change the supply demand dynamics to favor software engineers. Then their salaries will rise accordingly. Another part of the equation: in today’s age of massive aggregation around a few gigantic tech monopolies in the US, those few companies are able to pay large salaries because they derive a lot of value from their employees. But the reality of compensation is not very dissimilar between the US and other locations once you remove FAANG from the equation. FAANG companies employee a very highly selectively chosen segment of software developers who can command high value, but are also a tiny slice of the market. But the majority of software engineers in America are not employed in FAANG or compensated that way.