I think that nationality angle is interesting but I believe it's only incidental. For example I tend to sympathise with this idea that in some cases IT workers

I think that nationality angle is interesting but I believe it's only incidental. For example I tend to sympathise with this idea that in some cases IT workers are overpaid compared to other professions, but I'm from a relatively wealthy country (Scotland). When you have lived somewhere that has lower wages overall, but you have worked in a highly paid profession in a wealthy country then you're going to be quite keenly aware of the gap in compensation. So if you've seen the wages a janitor, shopkeeper, cleaner or even schoolteacher in Estonia makes and reflect on the fact that Facebook, Google devs in London will likely be on over $100k/year then yeah it's not unreasonable to conclude that we are overpaid. London and Estonia are much different places with different salary expectations and living costs so you can't really expect them to be identical (not least across different jobs) but I think it's unavoidable that anyone with experience of both will make the comparison. Sorry for picking on London and Estonia here, it wasn't personal :) I the same would apply to San Francisco vs Budapest or Frankfurt vs Manila or Oslo vs Rosario etc etc