I only compare gross income because I work remotely. My healthcare costs are the same if I work for German client or US client. And German pay sucks.

To be fair, that's also because with US salaries, you get a rate that's adjusted to a much higher cost of living. If you adjust for that, you can get similar salaries as a programmer in finance or pharma in Germany.

I completely agree that overall salaries are lower in Germany even adjusted for cost of living but the insane price levels in SV compared to most parts of Germany skew that even more.

The situation is more severe in the UK where central London has similar cost of living as NYC or SV but salaries at a quarter of SV levels outside of finance.

I have ignored remote work for exactly this reason - it's obvious that someone on a six figure SV salary can live like a king in Asia but in the SV still may be forced to live in a car (both literally as in rough sleeping or figuratively as in being stuck in commute hours a day). But jobs and people capable and willing to do this are rare in absolute numbers.

I don't have a lot of experience and confidence regarding this, but pretty sure DE,NL,ES,IT pay sucks compared to US as an example (as a local).

You can't put German and Dutch salaries in the same categories as Spain and Italy. There's easily a 50% difference.

German salaries are really attractive for Europe.

It still sucks compared to US.

Even after taking out cost of rent, cost of living and cost of healthcare? I highly doubt that.

Having worked in both places, yes, they still suck in comparison.

In absolute numbers German pay may suck, but once you factor in lower rents (e.g. in Munich a 60 m2 2-br flat in the city center will set you back ~1200 €), lower healthcare costs (no co pays aside of 5€/Rx, no "out of pocket" costs for medically indicated procedures), a decent pension scheme and lower cost of food and other expenses, suddenly it is competitive.

I'm also in Germany for the moment. How did you get US remote jobs if I might ask?

You just apply ? There are a lot of job boards & places to find remote jobs. I only work in CET and not all of them allow this. Company I work now for example has developers in different timezones. You will have a meeting once a week at 19-20 though.

UK is also much better and the timezone is ~same. I've mostly worked with US, UK, CA, IR (subsidiary of US).

An easier way is to focus your skills and specialize in, say, scalability/search-engine/low-level/ml. There will be less jobs, (compared to js), but you will have more leverage.