[senko]

I've been in both sides of the table: ran a dev agency in Central Europe, as well as hired developers from various places in the world.

In my experience, wages of experienced developers don't vary so much geographically, because outsourcing is a global market. Dev/agency in Ukraine, Germany, China or Argentina know what kind of rates they can get based on the skillset involved.

These rates are much lower than in superstar cities, that's basic supply and demand and CoL calculation.

But companies chasing extra low rates will end up with subpar team and these are the clients and agencies that give outsourcing a bad name - be it India, Nigeria or Slovenia.

That's not to say rates are flat. Specialized shops/devs, people involved with prominent open source projects and those that invest in deeper relationships with the clients (and delivering higher/noncomiditized value) can charge a premium, while body shops on UpWork will bid lower amounts.

Outsourcing, like many other things in busines can be great IF you know what you're doing.