As I've mentioned before, I've had intimate experience hiring across Europe and at the 75th percentile and above, the salaries tend to be extremely close when comparing Western Europe and CEE. The difference becomes attitude.

A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath.

I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.

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cowboy_henk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Pretty sure salaries at large tech companies are way higher in places like London, Zurich or Amsterdam than in Warsaw or Prague for example. Berlin may be closer to the eastern countries.

It might help to discuss actual ranges instead of "intimate experience" so we can tell if your experience matches reality.

	▲	Squarex 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Zurich is probably in a league of its own. London next. But then it is quite similiar in Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Frankfurt, ...
	▲	wqaatwt 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think Zurich is in a slightly different league than London or Amsterdam in that regard but especially if you go down to the median and below (low taxes are helpful as well)

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steve1977 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I cannot confirm your experience with the attitude of the latter unfortunately (I can confirm the former though).

Edit: But as mentioned, the near-shoring resources also were quite substantially less expensive. So you could say we bought cheap and we got cheap.