https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151256.htm
Ed- typos
The numbers I found for Germany seem to support my initial comment at least from a German point of view. The median software developer salary in Germany is €62k ($70k) [0]. Seeing that high of a median in the US is quite impressive. Do high salaries like those usually include benefits like healthcare?
[0] (German) https://web.arbeitsagentur.de/entgeltatlas/beruf/15260?alter...
Many employers (and probably most direct employers of software engineers) will also offer additional benefits like subsidized tax advantage retirement savings plans (401k's, very common), wellness/fitness programs (common, but varied in extent), or subsidized stock purchase programs (less common.) Those benefits can easily add up to an extra 5-10% of income.
In the US you could pull in $100k or $120k easily. But then you'd have to live in the US, which is a major downside to be sure.
I think that is another factor that is under-appreciated. Many people seem to completely ignore the cost of living in the area surrounding the company and the country in general.
A friend of mine had an exceptional start into his career, money and skill wise. He is quite possibly the smartest person I've ever met in person. Three years into his career he got quite a few very very attractive offers from US based companies offering him an attractive relocation package as well as a significantly higher salary. He denied all of those, telling me that all the money they could offer would not justify the awful work life balance that would be a result of those positions.
I think that is a perspective that many people seem to lose, mainly because our culture tells us to "work hard" (although the degree of that seems to differ dramatically). But it also goes to show that Europe might be competitive by "idealistic" standards, but not at all when it comes to market standards. And the market standards will only continue to get worse when looking into the structural changes in important industries like automotive.
You're not getting 60k as an entry level dev in most of Europe though. I'm middle level in Austria and barely make above 50k. I know in high CoL big metro areas like Munich and Amsterdam you can make way more but the real estate market in those places is currently broken though IMHO.
Your compensation will depend more on working for top international companies that can scale internationally and extract value at that large scale, rather than the country itself though.
And Austria, has in general, almost no top international SW companies, just mom and pop shops that only serve the small local market, so the pay is junk.
An average bachelor's graduate with no additional work experience most likely won't get 60k.
With a (very) good Master's + some relevant student jobs that's very much possible.
Even at the upper averages though these numbers still aren't really all that competitive. As a single data point, I'm earning 2-3x the local market rate in Europe (170k) by working for a US startup remotely.
That seems like a fairly popular option nowadays which is not surprising given the fairly unattractive local market. But I'm interested, how does it work after taxes and social security contributions? I've been looking into that here in Germany, but the headache that comes with working for a remote only company does not seem worth the higher salary (at least not for entry level positions).
From what I understand the premium for the actual company I work for though is around 10% of my salary.
"Work smart, not hard." Seems to me something American employers don't get, they'd rather have you work inefficiently for prolonged periods of time than let you do hard work for a few hours. It's kind of proven that most people burn out and stop being efficient after as little as 30 minutes, there, a short break gets you up and running again, but this has a limit before you totally burn out for the day. So it's not even in their best interest to force you to work a lot. And I much rather work with someone that knows what's good for them, it means they are less likely to make insane requests like forced team work.
Nevermind that, imagine working to a corporation that makes you think of them as "family". I don't know how often corporate culture like that you will encounter in America, but it is there to some extent. And if worst comes to worst, can you be picky?
Here's a source for national workweeks, maybe not every job is considered there, but seems like a good rough estimate that corresponds to people's anecdotes.
[1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-w...
The actual source of information the webpage above uses, it may be more up to date: https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
TLDR: Consider work culture, actual purchasing power and free time.
TL;DR: European senior devs certainly don't make as much as their FAANG counterparts (most U.S. based seniors probably don't make that much either) but €40k isn't a usual senior salary in most (west-)european countries.