[nonethewiser]

Why would they "normalize"? Do you think Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Amazon, etc. are going to relocate to the EU or something? Are all the venture capitalists going to flock to Spain?

The mechanics driving compensation arent "normal." American pay is driven by the underlying mechanics. The USA didn't just randomly win at tech.

There are real factors that could reduce US compensation, but calling that "normalization" assumes the current gap exists for no reason. It exists because the US software industry is structurally different from most of Europe.

[afavour]

> Why would they "normalize"?

Globalization? Look at manufacturing, it moved to a country where things are a lot more affordable. In a world where remote collaboration gets easier and easier and you're able to pay software engineers half the world away a lot less there's no way it wouldn't have an effect on the domestic market.

[vanuatu]

feel like that narrative has died given the return of RTO. In person work is really valuable

and the talent is just better in the US on average (mostly because of immigration!), software is so levered one good Eng can 1000x the value of a bad one

[layer8]

If demand for software developers decreases due to AI, salaries are likely to decrease as well. Take the academic world for comparison, where supply of very smart people vastly exceeds the demand.

[vanuatu]

I suspect demand for software is nearly infinitely elastic, so far we’ve seen demand and comp for engineers increase as coding agents got better

Academia for comparison doesn’t make money…maybe a better comparison is HFT? Plenty of very very smart people playing a zero sum game, yet their comp has only increased

[nonethewiser]

I already addressed this in my comment. There are real factors that could reduce US compensation, but calling that "normalization" assumes the current gap exists for no reason.