[danwee]

> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.

That's right and wrong and the same time. If we are talking about non-junior positions: Developers in Spain who earn <= $30K/year are not going to apply for positions in American (and non Spanish) companies because they probably don't know they can do so. They are not in the "global" market, they do not read HN, they work either for consultancy companies or agencies (hence the low salaries). They usually don't work for product companies. They may not even speak enough English.

On the other hand, non-junior Spanish Developers who earn more than $30K/year do so because they know their value. They speak good enough English. They work for product companies (either unknown or globally well-known ones) and hence their salaries are higher than the median salary advertised in the link you provided. These developers can earn $80K/year in Spain (either for an Spanish company or remotely for an EU company), so if they decide to work for an American company (and this means usually a) weird working hours because of timezone differences, b) perhaps working as a contractor instead of as an employee), they definitely know that $50K-$80K/year is very low.

So, yeah, for the Spanish developers that American companies can hire, that salary is low.