[digitalixus]

Perhaps, but they're certainly not as low as a lot of people portray them to be. I know a guy who did mechanical engineering and with just 1 internship experience was offered a job at VW (albeit in Wolfsburg, not Berlin) for 65k a year upon graduation.

50-65k EUR as a starting salary in Berlin with under 2 years experience will make many people's eyeballs pop out and they'll start rambling about how "30k is the average and that's just disgustingly overpaid". Truth is though that it's reasonable to find those (tech or nontech, the trick is to not accept the first shit job, probably from Rocket Internet, that you get offered within 2 weeks of applying) and it's not overvalued - people making 30k are the ones being underpaid.

Also $100k for FAANG in the Silicon Valley is nothing. Assuming single young worker, 60+k EUR in Germany would be very competitive with the 100-150k USD range in the valley because you can rent a NICE studio apartment for 800-1000 EUR, spending 30-40 EUR on a night out is already plenty and in bigger cities like Berlin, you can get away without a car (it's still uncomfortable and inconvenient, but much less so if you're single, and certainly much better than BART and 99% of American cities).

If you're taking 6 figures in a LCOL US city where you're socking away 70% of your income as savings at under age 30, then yes, there's no equivalent to be found in Europe.