A much better metric is to look at net disposable income after tax, if you're focusing on the "making money" aspect.
If you're focusing on the life quality aspect you'll also have to consider mortgage, car ownership and time off.
Example:
- In Netherlands you have 24 business days of time off, where you can take them from the moment your contract begins (not after 1 year working), and you can take them however you want.
- Taking a mortgage in Netherlands is currently cheaper than renting and most houses in the "sweet spot" cost around 300k euros, which is ridiculously cheap. Monthly payments are subsidized by the government (for some years) which makes it cheaper than renting.
To summarise, every country has a lot to offer, and at the end of the day life is not just about money.
In Italy we have 28 days off plus national holidays
Mortgage are cheap as in other European countries and if you avoid the city center you can buy a very decent apartment for less than 250k
20km from city center you can buy a villa for the same amount
Rents are generally a bit high in larger cities (Rome, Milan, Bologna)
Salaries in tech are not that great, but there's little if no competition, if you're good you can find good deals
Banks and insurances are investing in innovation and new technologies
You get to live the Italian life style
CONS
Nobody is actually investing a lot in Italy, roughly 150.000 people are leaving every year
That leaves a lot of jobs vacant but it can't honestly be considered a plus
It's not yet a startup ready country, things are changing, but it'll take time
Developer market rate in pretty much every country in the world (except maybe Switzerland and Norway) is pretty low compared to the US. Just saying.
According to Glassdoor for example the average salaries for Software Engineer are:
- US: $103k
- NL: €45k
For somebody who's moving halfway across the world anyway, I can imagine they'd prefer to look for a job in the US.
Edit: The comments below are all correct. I didn't mention any of the secondary benefits since the internet hardly ever mentions those. To somebody from a country where things like health insurance and paid sick/vacation days hardly exist, there's a much smaller chance they look into those things.
Also in the US a lot is dependent on employer (health care, vacation days, etc.), whereas in the Netherlands many things are set by law.
My point was that people who look at salaries on the internet and compare those, will often choose the highest and dismiss the lowest.