The figures are inflated because they focus on outliers. The vast majority of employers in EU are plain boring companies, telekom, industrial, automotive, and p

The figures are inflated because they focus on outliers. The vast majority of employers in EU are plain boring companies, telekom, industrial, automotive, and products that have a market but not that of Google, Facebook, Amazon. There's little difference between the salary of a software developer and that of a teacher or police officer, developers in EU here are less of a privileged caste isolated in their hundreds of thousands of dollars per year bubble. I myself live in Eastern Europe and make €60,000 per year gross, which is about the median pay for a developer in Western Europe. Tax rate is 35% so I'm left with =~ €40,000 net. Apart from real estate, prices are on par with Western Europe, meaning that food, energy, transportation cost about the same. I could make more but that would erode my competitive advantage, the employer needs to feel they're getting a good deal, so I also don't need to go above and beyond to prove myself, just do my job. With work from home there are also other possibilities which I won't discuss here, only that they landed me another €30,000 net last year, there's a saying in my native language which goes about "the gentle lamb sucks on two sheep" ;) What makes the difference is real estate, my 65 square meters apartment + garage sells for about €100,000 and I'm renting another one as my home office for €300 per month (not including expenses, which add up to another €200 in the winter). My cousin who lives in Paris owns a 30 square meters apartment evaluated at €300,000+ and was asked a million euro for an 80 square meters one. Ridiculous if you ask me, he doesn't make vastly more than I do, in order to be able to afford the larger one.