FAANG hire in Europe. They are not paying drastically different amounts to those European employees. When I relocated from the US to Europe from a FAANG company my salary was market adjusted (about a 25% cut), but RSUs and stock were kept the same.

25% sounds like a lot, but my cost of living dropped more than 25% moving out of the Bay Area, so I was more than happy.

Once you become a senior enough engineer at FAANG the overwhelming majority of your compensation is stock, and when that happens the base salary becomes pretty irrelevant. My base salary is maybe 1/5 of my total compensation at this point.

I don't think it's true that the pay isn't drastically different. I was in the pipeline with Apple recently, and the pay for a sr. eng position was 80k. This is comparable to other companies where I interviewed. Of course, without receiving a solid offer I didn't hear about the RSU side, but I think your experience moving internally is totally different to starting a role with FAANG within EU.

> They are not paying drastically different amounts to those European employees.

Sorry but that's simply not true. Based on my personal experience at FAANGs (including management roles), SV packages are much higher compared to London, Munich, Paris etc. Only exception is Zurich.

> but my cost of living dropped more than 25% moving out of the Bay Area,

The number I look at is total saving amount each year.

I think it has more to do with economics than mindsets. Compare Microsoft/Amazon salaries in Seattle and Vancouver for instance.