European countries and companies are less likely to go big or go home in my experience. The USA has the expression, "bet the farm" and American leaders like to use it frequently. I can't think of any European equivalent saying off the top of my head. That results in bigger bets, bigger payouts when they succeed, more capital to invest in even bigger bets, etc.

The UK case of DeepMind is a good example. A big bet by British standards - lots of money raised and spent on pure research with no business model to drive it. By British standards that's incredibly brave and/or reckless. Yet a successful gamble, sold for half a billion dollars. But, sold to an American company literally called Alpha bet.

> Is it because of the culture of not valuing software as much as 'hard' engineering

No - they are paid about equally.

Here is a table (German text, does not matter, the table is clear enough): https://www.ingenieur.de/karriere/gehalt/wie-viel-verdienen-...

"Engineers with >2 years experience by sector", from top to bottom: chemistry/pharmaceuticals, automobile, energy, IT, mech. engineering, electronics, engineering and planning offices, construction

As you can see IT actually is right in the middle.

>I read someone commenting that pay for software engineers in Japan and Korea are similarly uncompetitive for the former reason.

Pay for software engineers in China is actually more competitive than in Japan/Korea, in spite of China's GDP per capita being much lower. I suspect a key difference is the presence of many startups and large tech companies, something that Japan and Korea seem to lack.