It's not trivial to do. First you have to account for a lot of things if you want to make a fair wage comparison. Europeans generally work much less. Germans almost work 500 hours per year less than Americans. Cost of living is vastly different. I've heard from a lot of friends in the US they pay tens of thousands per year on education and childcare in expensive cities, that's not the case in Europe where most of it is free, so lower salary is a function of that.
The one thing that probably has a real impact is the enormous size and and profitability and competition of large American software firms for talent. There's not many of them in Europe with the exception of SAP or something? So that's a real difference but it's not easy to recreate because the European market is not homogeneous and policy environment is much more weary of big tech.
I don't actually think Europe should or can compete on wages. Europe has other things to offer. Smaller, healthier ecosystems with focus on working on tech that solves social problems, better balance of life and work, free education and high degrees of safety and equality, walkable cities, and so on. There's no need to be more market-driven.
Another commenter mentioned the income-per-employee of SAP compared to US companies, and it was 4-8x difference. I think SAP has the problem of scaling, in that they need to hire people to grow the company, whereas the FAANGs can multiply their revenue without having to hire.
Spotify is also mentioned in that same post; it has the (profit) scaling problem that the more usage it gets, the more they have to pay their artists. Income and expenses scale alongside each other.
The one thing that probably has a real impact is the enormous size and and profitability and competition of large American software firms for talent. There's not many of them in Europe with the exception of SAP or something? So that's a real difference but it's not easy to recreate because the European market is not homogeneous and policy environment is much more weary of big tech.
I don't actually think Europe should or can compete on wages. Europe has other things to offer. Smaller, healthier ecosystems with focus on working on tech that solves social problems, better balance of life and work, free education and high degrees of safety and equality, walkable cities, and so on. There's no need to be more market-driven.