Well, depends what you define as tech. I might get some flak for this but in my experience, the AVERAGE quality of developers in Europe and especially in the US

Well, depends what you define as tech. I might get some flak for this but in my experience, the AVERAGE quality of developers in Europe and especially in the US is much higher than in Asia. For example, a majority of the data science candidates I interviewed in Singapore, outside the Haskell community would fit all of the data I provided them with and call that their model (the concept of validation never entering their mind). Similarly, most didn't know what the relational model was and just wanted to use NoSQL methods without justification (mostly because it's hot and would look good on their CV). The exceptions usually already worked in the US, and wanted to come home to their family, so I'm guessing there's a fair bit of brain drain going on. Some specialties which are "harder" to acquire, like dev ops, also help fetch higher levels - I can think of one of our dev ops candidate who was getting 280k USD in Hong Kong managing 100 servers. I'd say those offers are mostly in the financial industry (obviously) or in big corp (think F500 companies, pharma, etc.) and involved a bit of leadership or specialised experience, not being yet another RoR developer. But keeping up with friends in the US, I find the rates are substantially higher if you can differentiate yourself. YMMV.