> German-speaking EU you'd get real top-notch engineering for 120€/h

No disrespect to German-speaking engs, but Colin isn't merely "top-notch", he's "the top".

Huge salaries (like those paid to "top" athletes in "top" professional team sports) aren't unheard of in Tech anymore. For instance, Google paid $2b+ to acquihire Noam Shazeer of c.ai back. Meta was rumoured to be paying $20m+ salaries to poach OpenAI researchers based in Zurich.

Those pay packages are basically only on the west coast and in New York, a "small" region of the U.S.

100-200k, is what you'd expect elsewhere. Which is still pretty good, just not astronomical.

$120/hr gets you a very good developer in the US, too. Just not in the Bay Area or Seattle.

The going rate for 1099 work tends to be higher than this to account for risk, unbillable work, and increased tax rate. Agencies that lend out their developers to clients charge 2-3x this. Remember that engineers can work remotely now which makes regional rates much fuzzier.

They just want to earn at least the same as a plumber.