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.