> German-speaking EU you'd get real top-notch engineering for 120€/h

No disrespect to German-speaking engs, but Colin isn't merely "top-notch", he's "the top".

Huge salaries (like those paid to "top" athletes in "top" professional team sports) aren't unheard of in Tech anymore. For instance, Google paid $2b+ to acquihire Noam Shazeer of c.ai back. Meta was rumoured to be paying $20m+ salaries to poach OpenAI researchers based in Zurich.