[creamyhorror]

Many reasons, but the most basic factor is topline revenue: American tech companies earn revenue from both their local market as well as a huge swathe of the world. Without large enough topline revenue, the companies wouldn't have the ability to offer high wages to engineers.

If you work for companies with smaller or less wealthy target markets, they simply won't be able to pay you as much (even if they wanted to).

There's also the culture of compensating talent well, the dynamic startup scene that drives demand for tech workers, and high costs of living in key tech hubs driving up baseline pay. Those help justify paying out a greater chunk of overall revenue to tech workers.