[joe_mamba]

Chill bruh. He most likely meant in EU's most livable, big, international Tier-1 cities where the SW dev markets are hot: London, Paris, Barcelona, Stockholm, Munich, Lisbon, Warsaw, Prague, etc

Obliviously, if you live in some small-ish 200k-500k non-touristic city away from the big metro areas, then CoL will be much less and your income will stretch much further and you might be better off financially, but then those cities also have a lot less to offer in terms culture, events, entertainment, along with fewer or even no work and socializing opportunities for SW devs as tech jobs concentrate only in the big metro areas.

So it depends on what you prioritize. Young single people tend to sacrifice savings, to live in big expensive cities for career and social opportunities, while people with families tend to do the opposite. But in general it's difficult to have your cake and eat it too unless you're very lucky.