Well, you're in for a shock. Fact is Indian employees (working in the main cities in tech companies) are paid more than European employees (besides London and Switzerland). Companies should be outsourcing to Europe, not to India.

I've seen that consistently across companies in the past decade. Europe salaries have been stagnating while India and China can be growing 10% a year. The gap, assuming there was one 20 years ago, didn't last long.

I don't think the kind of engineers that command 300k in valley are to be had in Amsterdam for 80k. In India that's possible.

Indians who are on that level are not going to be in India, but they are already in SV or Europe.

Many have returned back home, or got to that level locally and don't want to leave.

The Indians I've worked with who returned say they did it because life was easier. Sure they make less money on India, but in India servants come every day to cook and clean (for about 60 cents a day). As one guy said "I know how to cook, but I didn't realize I'd be cooking every meal"

not true. it's a huge country and there are so many reasons why people decide not to emigrate particularly with the visa hassles worldwide and evolving startup scene in India.

Does 300k buy talent and experience, or 60 hour weeks and people with no outside interests?

The best engineers I've ever worked with were definetly not making that sort of money, mostly because they were the sort of people that didn't like going to interviews and were more interested in tinkering with their side projects and hobbies than competative careers.

I very specifically avoided any qualitative judgement on skill in my comment. "Kind" includes all the qualities SV firms are after. Whether they are the best at what they do or not isn't the point.

I find that hard to believe, from the engineers I have met I find it very difficult to imagine software built in India working.

I don't think it is "way less". 80K USD converts to 5,979K INR which is about the ballpark estimate some of the senior engineers I know make in India (one of them is working for the Western European company btw).

One of the reasons to move to India would be the availability of talent even if it is at comparable cost. Companies like to scale and lack of talent is a risk they want to mitigate.

In my experience working with outsourcing agencies - "talent available" in India is filling headcount numbers. Good developers ask for similar wages as EU based ones and are equally hard to find, probably even harder because the market is filled with scammers (eg. on several occasions I would interview a competent guy and then the work would clearly get delegated to someone inexperienced)

Sure, scammers are abound and the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size, the number of good developers is high as well.

My impression from talking with a few people from India working in UK and working with Indian outsourcing agencies/contractors is that India routinely gets cost cutting projects based on price/employee - this creates "coder farms" which breed code farm quality developers + the education system on the whole is inferior (from what I understand India took diploma mills to the next level). So the best talent emigrates because even with the remote option, the increase in life standard and opportunities from emigrating are worth it, and low skill/almost bot level development for rent culture reinforces itself.

> the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size

This is not how ratios work.

Can you elaborate why that statement is incorrect?

If B/G is high, G/B is low. But if P is a very high number G/B * P must be a decently high number as well.

When you pay per hour per head by designation, that is what businesses optimize for - inflation.

I have worked in one, 80% of the work is in making the managers both India & American look good to upper management.

India is also a huge market for uber.

Yes but Netherlands employees won't do what they're told and are basically unfireable. Not quite as bad as Belgium but not far off.

What do you mean with won't do what they're told ?

Disclaimer : am Dutch.

Likely the OP means they will not submissively do exclusively what they are told; in a no questions asked, military-style command and control sort of way. More specifically, will answer to ridiculous demands of “we need this by tomorrow.”

But tomorrow is my 'dad day' !

papadag : https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/dutch-dads-and-t...

They have _rights_ and everything.

An engineer at 80K in Europe would be working on their own. Whereas in India they could be running a team, so much greater leverage.

At least in Germany, $80k salary would mean costs of nearly $100k for the employer because of additional social security payments required. So it really isn't a fair comparison.

Would that translate into a "40k in your pocket" salary? I have heard Germans mention 50% tax before, but no idea how it is implemented.

For a single without kids, 50%, meaning 40k in your pocket, is a good rule of thumb, yes.

So an 80k salary in Germany involves the employee paying 50% and the company paying another 20k on top of that?

You can check the exact amounts with this online calculator: https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gehaltsrechner-...

Set the "Steuerklasse" to 1 for singles, 3 for married employees.

Yes. But remember that this includes health insurance, basic retirement, unemployment benefits and so on.

> $80k salary would mean costs of nearly $100k for the employer

Closer to 150..

No, sorry, an $80k salary would cost $94k for the employer in Germany.

I am in Germany (where software engineers are ridiculously undervalued) and would consider 80k an underwhelming mid-level salary. According to levels.fyi, salary in the netherlands is quite a bit better.

Why is SWE undervalued in Germany?

Are other engineering disciplines valued higher?

The reason is that instead of 300k (or 80k) you're paying less than 80k.