But that's my point - salaries are factored based on labor market demands and comparative performance of your macroeconomy (UK high finance and law salaries are comparable with the US), not CoL.
I’ve never been to Boston. Why are the prices high there?
Think they're too high? You're free to start a company and pay less.
But in UK an Ireland they get free healthcare, paid vacation, sick leave and labor protections, no?
There's a reason you don't see new grad hiring in France (where they actually try to enforce work hours), and they have a subsequently high youth unemployment rate.
Though even these new grad roles are at risk to move to CEE, where their administrations are giving massive tax holidays on the tune of $10-20k per employee if you invest enough.
And the skills gap I mentioned about CS in the US exists in Weatern Europe as well. CEE, Israel, and India are the only large tech hubs that still treat CS as an engineering disciple instead of as only a form of applied math.
I happen to have a sibling in consulting who was seconded from London to New York for a year, doing the same work for the same company, and she found the work hours in NY to be ludicrously long (and not for a significant productivity gain: more required time-at-desk). So there are varying levels of "expected to work off the clock hours".
I pay over 40% effective tax rate. Healthcare is far from free.
The issue is salary expectations in the US are much higher than those in much of Western Europe despite having similar CoL.
And $120k for a new grad is only a tech specific thing. Even new grad management consultants earn $80-100k base, and lower for other non-software roles and industries.