I live in Europe and earn ca. 6 times more than my friend who is a bus driver in the same city. We both have access to free education and, if we wish, also free healthcare, for which I am paying slightly more, but I really don't mind.
So you're proving my point that it works for you when income distribution is not egalitarian because you wouldn't be very happy if you earned the same as your friend.
To put things in perspective, according to this website[0], bus drivers earn ca. €20 per hour, within some quite limited margin. I don't know if this data reflects reality. However, the data for SWE show a much, much wider margin[1]. So it would make much more sense to compare the medians, and this gives only 2x difference. A big gap still, but not enormous as in my case.
[0] https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/bus-driver/germany [1] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/germany
Granted, I was also guilty of that since I was comparing the salary of a tram driver for the local state public transport company where they get great benefits and the union always negotiates top salaries since they have a monopoly and can just increase the bus fare to their customers whenever they need a raise.
But my point still stands. Why bother going to uni to become and engineer in the competitive private sector, if you're gonna net only 500 Euros more than a driver or any other government annex union job?
But even if we assumed for a moment that 3k is some kind of upper limit: remuneration reflects demand. If nobody wants to do jobs that are necessary for the society, the related wages go up. From this perspective, things might be working as expected in a society with too many SWEs and too few bus drivers.
3K NETTO(post-tax) is the norm for mid positions in Austria for SW devs, not on the lower end. Where do you live if this is too low?
> 5k should be possible for senior positions.
5k NETTO is the norm?! In this market? WHERE? Survivorship bias maybe?
>From this perspective, things might be working as expected in a society with too many SWEs and too few bus drivers.
There's no "too few bus drivers", there's the unions of bus drivers (and other jobs) who can push their salary and cost increases into the prices of the general public, as they please (kind of like government workers) since they have a monopoly on public transit and that's what people need to get to work so they don't need to compete on the free market. You're comparing free market labor with a union monopoly.
Maybe a good strategy if you want to have a country where everyone is a government worker and you have no private sector innovation. Would you still be SW devs for the same wages?
And it seems I was wrong, because according to this page https://salaryaftertax.com/de/salary-calculator 80k actually gives you only 4k/month, not 5k, because of almost 40% tax. Sorry for that (on the other hand, I learned something new...).
Either you have a FANG wage or your friend has a poverty wage because here's how it's in Austria SW Dev wage 3k net/month, bus driver 2,5k. There's no 6x difference here.
So you're proving my point that it works for you when income distribution is not egalitarian because you wouldn't be very happy if you earned the same as your friend.
Sorry, but something is wrong here. Either you're data/math is wrong, or you and your friends work in the top 1% FAANGs/big-tech jobs, because those tech salaries aren't the norm in Europe.
My loose impression is the median for regular SWEs in Germany is around 60k and for senior positions ca 80k. Whether this is demotivating or otherwise is a matter of personal attitude I think - the difference is not enormous but it is there.