[ffgjgf1]

> Say some country in eastern Europe, where average salary is $500 / month. Then you only hire from the top CS programs in the country and pay them, say, 3 times the national average - so $1500 / month.

This is 10-15 years out of date. And even then it was hardly ever as straightforward as that. And only ever applied to junior and maybe mid level developers or those who couldn’t effectively communicate in English. High skilled one were significantly more mobile and were basically competing with a much more global pool of developers. They could relatively easily move (if not to the US then at least Western Europe so your potential savings were usually limited to the difference in CoL + some premium).

This led to pretty high inequality based on skill/experience e.g. to top CS graduates could expect their income to increase by 3x if not more over the next 5 years after graduation.