I will take my 250k in London vs 450k in New York any time.
USA is just a third world country with a Gucci belt.
My family's value system is completely incompatible with how America operates and what drives people and organisations.
I have many senior dev friends who think the same.
I guess this is a Silicon Valley megacorp right? Who could afford those wages?! Over here in the UK, if you're absolutely shit hot, principal engineer type material, I guess £150k + is common. Maybe more if you're a true elite engineer, but US wages are surreal. As others point out though, we get a lot of great public services, state pensions and so on. All a tradeoff.
I'm not valuing it at 200k. You're basing that number on some extreme outlier 500k wage that was plucked out of the air. Hardly the norm in the US.
Fwiw, I'll grant that the US is ahead in big tech but I'd never move there. The quality of life is pretty poor compared to wealthy European countries. I've spent a lot of time there and I'm sorry to say, you seem a bit delusional to us over here. Life is hard in the US to many people here and kind of uncivilised in terms of social safety nets, inequality and any number of other metrics.
Even in California the median is around 120k. Well done for earning 500k but that is not a typical software engineer salary. Even at Google its under 300k, and FAANG-type companies are, by definition, outliers.
I don't need to worry about my family in Europe. No matter what health problems they have, they will be taken care of in a good public hospital and it won't cost them a thing.
When my kids are old enough to go to university, they won't have to take out a loan to pay for courses.
If they drop out of college, they'll still be able to get a decent job that pays a living wage.
They'll have access to affordable child care for their children, and they won't need a 200.000€ job just so they can afford living close to their job.
I don't have to be afraid of getting mugged or shot on the street if I go to the wrong part of town because we have much lower crime rates because our social security system helps people who run into hardship instead of punishing them.
Half a fucking million.
All good European engineers are leaving to USA. And I would too.