I'm Dutch and moved to the US in early 2016 to work for a bigtech company. Compensation here is about 3x what I would make back home.

After working here for just six years I could move back home and buy a house outright with the money I've been able to save.

I don't need a big house or a big car, but making more money means I can coastfire in the next five years, so it's absolutely worth it to me.

It's a large combination of factors that affect this... first off, houses and apartments in top tier tech cities in the US are far more than 200k/500k, the labor market is more competitive, and in some states (like California), non-compete clauses are not enforceable, so switching jobs is relatively low effort/cost for the employee.

Are Swedish salaries given pre-tax or post-tax? Houses with good schools near high paying tech jobs are usually greater than $2M, with taxes that will run 25k/year...

In the bay are an apartment where your property and safety are at risk can start at $400k, and a 3 bedroom house would be upwards of $1.5m.

> It just feels ridiculous that US salary can be 10x this

Those $350k jobs exist, but are very rare and hard to get.