There are a lot of Danes in Silicon Valley, I mean, C++, C# and Ruby were made by Danes, so it’s not like Murica isn’t open for us.
You can make a lot of money in IT anywhere though. I manage 70 people, in a muniplacity that is well paid. I’ve been headhunted for much higher salaries throughout my career though, but I’ve always preferred public service.
The fact that I could be home at 15:00 on a Friday, with my kids picked up and the groceries done helped a lot in my younger years as well of course.
My bad.
That is my point. Many of them move to the SV because they can get better conditions (caused by more leverage) there than if they stay in Denmark because there is a magnitude more tech companies there than in DK. I'm pretty sure they don't just move to avoid the rain :)
If I have the choice between working for Palantir or Facebook, I choose Facebook. If have to choose to between Facebook and Apple I choose Apple. Whatever I choose I will still live extremely comfortably. And yes not all those companies have an equally bad impact on society.
In both of your examples it's fair to say that you (or CS grads in Denmark) probably don't have that kind of leverage, because this is not the Silicon Valley. If you have to choose between working for FB at 150k$/year or public service for a third of that, then yes, choosing ethics has a big negative impacts on your life and it's hard to blame anyone for choosing FB.
They don't have this problem.