If the company is from the same first world country as you then you have a significant advantage of having cultural affinity to the people who are doing the hir

If the company is from the same first world country as you then you have a significant advantage of having cultural affinity to the people who are doing the hiring and that you might be working with if hired. Someone from overseas might be as good at programming as you and perhaps they would even adjust their working hours to match the company timezone, but they cannot completely replicate a shared cultural understanding that is needed for smooth collaboration. Furthermore, if someone from cheap country is truly as good as someone from developed country at doing the same job then it is undesirable for them to sell their work too cheaply (let's ignore clickworkers here - we're talking about skilled knowledge work). If quality is there, they want to sell it at marginally lower price. Therefore global competition for skilled work does not necessarily cause race to the bottom - cost of labour will converge to some globally mediocre level long-term. It may go down in the first world, but will go up in cheaper places. Employers are likely to still find it worthwhile to pay more for local candidates work ceteris paribus due to cultural affinity advantage that is difficult to surpass for someone from abroad. Consider Upwork. There's masses of people spamming the platform with incoherent ramblings about how good they are at doing something real cheap (and still struggling to get enough work), but on the other hand there are people making six figure yearly amounts. That would not be the case if global competition always made the price go down to third world levels. Just say the amount you feel is fair to ask for what you can do and would the worthwhile for you.