I have heard EU is experiencing a different market right now, and there’s a variety of threads on this site why that might be. But I also know many US companies with remote work know this and are beginning to market to EU devs more.
Pretty much this. Outside of the large metro areas like London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Stockholm, Warsaw, etc. where all of the finance and investments are already concentrated, it's an absolute wasteland (at least here in Austria). Unless you work for a FAANG, a US company, FinTech or a successful well funded unicorn, EU tech salaries take huge nosedive and are in line with your average office grunt work.
The main difference in the EU vs US tech job markets is that in the EU there is far more qualified talent due to free higher education vs the US, and far less job opportunities due to the smaller, more fragmented and slower growing EU economy (just compare the US vs EU stock market growth and see), so there are much fewer good local job opportunities. All this means competitions for well paying jobs in the EU is fierce and employers can be very picky so EU devs do not experience the same explosion of opportunities the US devs experience where anyone who can write a for loop lands a tech job.
Then again, due to offshoring, my friends in Eastern Europe are constantly showered with better and better offers, reaching Western EU wages at much lower CoL so maybe I should move there. Or maybe I'll go to med school since it's free and become a doctor, a much more respected career here, where your value increases with age and aren't at risk of offshoring even though there has historically been (and still is) a perpetual shortage of doctors.
I wish the SW engineering culture in Europe would improve, it seems like we get treated as grunts (best case) or as toddlers (no offense to the said party, toddlers are cool, they just dont get as much credit for their hard work as they should sometimes).
agreed on the doctor route. unfortunately, I'm a bit too old and a bit too married to invest 6 years in medschool.
moving to eastern Europe and getting remote contracts seem like only viable route in Europe. However, it feels like this is only speeding up the decline by de-valueing our western colleagues.