Web development does not generally fall under this umbrella, however.

Knowing how to write a complex web app with decent structured maintainable clean code, keep it optimized and secure, the ability to deploy it to to servers at the touch of a button isn't something I would expect from a junior dev.

This. So very much this.

Software companies always look for people with the latest fad ^H^H^H skill, which is - almost by definition - in short supply.

When nominal demand far outstrips nominal supply, I think it's fair to call it a shortage. Temporary. It will correct. In a less than a decade.

It's funny - the management ego part that is in alignment with your comment (that "there is no shortage")... Because coders have become the modern blue-collar assembly line worker, management types often want to pay assembly line worker prices, and are having a difficult time coming to grips with the fact that these workers might make more money than they do. Outrageous!

This is already happening in areas where there is a shortage (salaries rising) and in the time it takes for new people to acquire the required skills there is a shortage (ie. people would be willing to accept the conditions below the market rate but they can't get trained fast enough/get visas)

It should be noted that this is a very intentional policy. Finland's current right-wing government has been working hard (and in many quite confused ways too) to bring down cost of labour.

When elected, the Prime Minister's stated goal was a reduction of 5% across all salaries. (The name for this plan was kilpailukykysopimus, "the competitiveness agreement".) Due to expected resistance from unions, it has been watered down to various benefit cuts, promises of raise freezes, etc. But the atmosphere among the country's economic decision makers is very much one that pushes for salary reductions by any means possible.

Another name for this salary reduction plan is "internal devaluation". As a member of the Euro zone, Finland can't simply devaluate its currency to increase the competitiveness of its exports. So the other way to achieve the same goal is to reduce the internal cost of producing those goods.

(If you ask me, this whole thing is chasing a 1980s recipe for a 21st century problem. The problem with Finland's exports is not cost of goods or even quality; it's a combination of wrong industries and lack of global marketing savvy. The pipe dream of a 5% reduction in production costs won't solve any of that.)

Finns have quite a lot of housing debt, and spend a disproportionate amount of their income on housing compared to most other European countries. That debt load could become a huge problem for people when their salaries are converted to a new local currency but the debt remains.

If I have a 300k EUR mortgage, what happens to it? If it remains EUR-denominated while my salary is converted into a reborn FIM currency which then depreciates by 30%, suddenly my debt has effectively become 30% larger too. (Alternatively, if the debts were converted to FIM, the lender banks will still have a lot of EUR liabilities. Could they swallow that? One of the large banks, Nordea, isn't even Finnish. How could the government force a Swedish bank to convert loans into another currency?)

At the same time, the interest rate on those debts would skyrocket: right now it's close to zero, but an independent Finnish central bank would probably have to raise rates by multiple percentage points at once.

This combination would destroy many families' finances. Any government that did this would get a very negative windfall in the next election.

A "FinEuroExit" would be a huge transfer of money and future income from private citizens' pockets to the country's existing established big industries which have been unable to compete in a global market on their own. That doesn't sound like the kind of thing a modern government should be contemplating as their first choice.

Keynesian theory says that to improve the economy (read: put prideful workers back to work and increase outputs), you need to lower real wages. It also postulates that nominal wages are sticky - hence the standard solution for Keynesians is creating inflation to reduce the real value of the same nominal wages. I.e., instead of workers getting 5% fewer Euros, they instead get the same number of Euros but the value of each Euro is reduced by 5%.

For countries on the Euro, inflation isn't possible, so the only solution is to fix nominal wage stickiness.

Sometimes it's much better to hire a few talented people than an entire team. The young digital companies run by savvy technologists are attempting to play by the lean startup playbook.

And this is exactly the point.

If you can deliver you should get paid the same thing in St.Pet. If the company would really need these people they could open an office in St.Pet and offer similar / same salaries.But they do not want to.

If the need is to boost existing teams and not create entirely new teams then that's the problem there. It could be lack of imagination or courage as well :)