And the cost of living is so high that despite the fantastic salary most software engineers in Silicon Valley will never buy a house there.

Great place to make money before retiring elsewhere though.

Well yes, but many other countries have similar math when it comes to software engineering salaries as opposed to other fields. In most places, going into software is a good thing to do moneywise.

Germany not. Software is more on the lower end of high skilled work, definitely not at the top end.

Interesting. Still, am I correct that lower end of high skilled work is still middle-upper class in terms of income?

I find it difficult to find reliable numbers (since I work in a different industry), but it seems median entry salary for IT graduate is 40k€, which is 25k€ nett anually. I also find the middle-upper class difficult for germany (since salary upper class doesnt mean you are asset upperclass aka rich).

Personally I would say 25k€ nett is middle class; but here everybody wants to belong to the middle class so it usually has a wide stretch.

Big companies are unionized so salarys do not get that big, but are considered higher then in non-unionized companies.

How is the situation in the US?