alt Hacker NewsGovernments just can't come to grips with how much money software engineers make.
Paying a contractor $x million? Yeah no problem, projects are projects, they cost what they cost. Does that $x million pay for 5x fewer people than it would in construction or road repair? We don't know, we don't care, this is the best bid we got for the requirements, and in line with what similar IT projects cost us before.
Paying a junior employee $100k? "We can't do that, the agency director has worked here for 40 years, and he doesn't make that much."
Variants of this story exist in practically every single country. You can make it work with lower salaries through patriotism, but software engineers in general are one of the less patriotic professions out there, so this isn't too easy to do.
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Not just governments, that same kind of greed exists in private companies too.
The only way to make good money while being an employee is to have your buddy spin up a "vendor" offering overpriced bullshit and shill it within your company. In exchange, you also spin up a "vendor" and your buddy shills it at his company.
> Paying a junior employee $100k?
In Southern Europe? More like $30k gross.
> Paying a junior employee $100k? "We can't do that, the agency director has worked here for 40 years, and he doesn't make that much."
I can assure you that junior software engineers in Italy or anywhere else in the EU make nowhere near that amount of money. In fact, few of even the most senior software engineers make that amount of money anywhere in the EU (in Switzerland or the UK they might see such salaries, at the higher tiers).