> It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US
It actually is much lower.
That doesn't mean that developers aren't underpaid, but there definitely is a huge difference between a company serving the US market from inside the United States and one in Europe. In general the fraction of revenue that goes towards salaries is a fairly substantial chunk of the books of a typical company, but for a scalable proposition that is entirely virtual there is an advantage if your home market is unified in language and currency. And it also is an advantage if you have easy access to large amounts of capital.
Success breeds success and creaming off some of the $ of that success is what causes developer salaries to be what they are where they are: it's based on competition for talent mostly. And that's precisely why some of these large companies were trying to collude to depress the salaries as much as they could.
It actually is much lower.
That doesn't mean that developers aren't underpaid, but there definitely is a huge difference between a company serving the US market from inside the United States and one in Europe. In general the fraction of revenue that goes towards salaries is a fairly substantial chunk of the books of a typical company, but for a scalable proposition that is entirely virtual there is an advantage if your home market is unified in language and currency. And it also is an advantage if you have easy access to large amounts of capital.
Success breeds success and creaming off some of the $ of that success is what causes developer salaries to be what they are where they are: it's based on competition for talent mostly. And that's precisely why some of these large companies were trying to collude to depress the salaries as much as they could.
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