Ask HN: Why are SWE in the US more expensive than SWE in Europe?
Hello HN,
This is something that doesn't make sense to me, I was trying to hire a developer for a side project and received an astronomical quote for around $25K for what seems to be a simple and basic site, the EU developer (UK specifically) quoted me around $1 to $2K and was equally as senior engineer (I checked both of their work and github projects)
This on top of now most software engineers are using AI Copilot and ChatGPT in their work which means that most quotes and salaries look very overpriced.
This is something that doesn't make sense to me, I was trying to hire a developer for a side project and received an astronomical quote for around $25K for what seems to be a simple and basic site, the EU developer (UK specifically) quoted me around $1 to $2K and was equally as senior engineer (I checked both of their work and github projects)
This on top of now most software engineers are using AI Copilot and ChatGPT in their work which means that most quotes and salaries look very overpriced.
Am I missing something here?