I suspect this is because they consider the work that an engineer does as auxiliary in nature and that Taylorist presumptions can be applied to them (modern day factory workers).

I have an anecdote that somewhat fits your point. An old colleague of mine told me he was alone in the office one night, working away at something when the director of the program walks in and sort of surveys the open plan office and empty desks. He walks around and starts talking – ostensibly to the colleague but possibly to himself – about Henry Ford and the assembly line. He made the point that he was some sort of modern day Ford and that these desks were his assembly line.

It really motivated my colleague to avoid working unpaid overtime, so something good came out of it at least.

I'll answer from the perspective of another European country(Germany):

Because all companies artificially cap salaries through a silent "gentlemen's agreement" where execs refuse to believe that a working class simpleton such a software engineer can be worth more than X amount of money no matter how badly they need to hire one.

There is not much in therms of competition when they all do this.

Sure, there's tons of opportunities if you're looking for a job, but when they all cap their salaries, the so called competition for talent means nothing in the end.

The EU market is super fragmented due to differences in language, culture, income and regulations so it would be nearly impossible to successfully scale a service made for Swedish consumers to the Italians for example. As another example, the Norwegians only pay with card while the Austrians only pay in cash.

That's why almost every EU country/region has it's own local website for jobs, classifieds, real estate, etc. All this fragmentation coupled with the lack of risk friendly VC funding means there's no chance for big players the size of FAANG to rise up from Europe.

When ambitions software companies from Europe have a good idea and want to grow fast, they just launch directly in the US market, ignoring the EU for the beginning. It's simply a much easier and profitable market.

Aral Balkan made a compelling argument at the EU parliament:

"You are acting as an unpaid Research and Development department for silicon valley. Because if a startup here succeeds, it gets bought by Google or Facebook. If it fails, we pick up the bill."

https://video.lqdn.fr/videos/watch/861c07f7-7e9b-4e64-9765-c...

Another variant I've observed is launching in the EU first, hiring locally at low cost but also having low profits. Then once the idea is validated, the move to US (sometimes literally moving the company headquarters) seems obvious.

Booking.com did it very well, but of course the audience for that is intrinsically mobile and cross-border.

It might sound crazy, but if a company is struggling to fill a position, offering a higher salary just never seems to enter the conversation. Instead you'll talk about working with a different recruitment firm, reformulating the job advert, trying to tap existing staff through a referral scheme, etc.

The only time I've seen salary seriously in the mix is when companies are going after a known individual who can make demands based on proven exceptional talent, or when looking for candidates with extremely niche skills.

Get in contact with your local friendly tech recruiter and he'll ask about your experience and salary expectations. And when a recruitment firm is engaged, salary bands are communicated, though they're not often advertised. The recruitment firm (who employs your recruiter) is the matchmaker.

And if you're in a position to hire, you'll get lots of spam from recruiters, directly advertising candidates & CVs along with their salary expectations - it's unusual not to get a salary expectation in a cold approach from a recruiter.

Ground worker is what would have been called navvies

These are typically US or NA only remote

And the ones that aren’t pay “local” salaries