Their employers are making $300k+ net profit per employee. The salaries seem reasonable to me on that basis.

Some of them are. Google and Apple make stupendous profits. Uber loses money every quarter. But they pay similarly.

They have to, or they couldn’t recruit talent. The bar has been set - companies can pay eng high salaries and still be incredibly profitable.

In 2021, Saudi Aramco had a net income of $200 Bn., on a $622 Bn. revenue.

With 66800 employees, that comes to almost $3M / employee in net income. A quick google search seems to yield that avg. salary at Saudi Aramco is around $130k.

In fact, if this list https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-20-most-and-least-profi... - which seems to compare domestic companies - tech companies aren't really that represented in the top.

But I'd be surprised if the average worker of most companies on that list are making more than your average FAANG tech worker.

Salaries aren't based on profit per employee, that's just an upper limit. They're based on the market (ie. what it would cost to replace you).

If that were true, companies would be going out of business, but instead they're thriving. Why are Europeans so underpaid? Are their tech companies not thriving?

Scale and culture. For scale, see https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala... for more. There just isn't a lot of money in only a local market, and trying to accommodate a dozen countries worth of languages, culture and standards is far more difficult than one.

For culture, a lot of European countries feel it is justified developers earn similar to other white collar jobs. It doesn't have the "heightened" status I often feel the US seems to give developers. Other white collar jobs don't really earn a lot either. Tech jobs kind of stop growing at senior, and require pivoting into management at least partially for higher income. Speaking of management, it is kind of unheard to earn more than your manager, unless you solidly outrank them in seniority. As a result, whatever the manager is paid, forms a tight glass ceiling for oneself.

Sounds like a failure to embrace meritocracy.

Less offer, similar demand. European tech companies could pay more, but they don't need to because they don't compete as much for workers. If you ask for more they have no trouble finding someone else who will take it.