>Is he saying that $50k/year far outstrips what he can reasonably expect to earn as a fintech dev? If so, he's at least as much of an outlier as the $500k/year folks on the other end.
From what I can tell, this is pretty common for continental Europe. It's the one thing keeping me from leaving the US at this point. For whatever reason, their pay is total crap. Particularly when you include taxes. My take home pay as an uneducated mediocre javascript monkey in the US is probably 3x the average highly skilled senior engineer with a CS degree in the EU.