Remember that employee cost is usually estimated at twice their salary.

Does that scale neatly with salary? I would expect it not to, with things like benefits and other costs being relatively fixed regardless of salary

Until you’re over the many hundreds of thousands of dollars per year range, it works pretty well as a rule of thumb. If your company wants the cost of working in an office, they’re probably not paying high salaries to work in a rundown shack and the people making those high incomes also want better quality benefits (especially in the United States where healthcare is so expensive and cheaper plans mean more time having to argue with someone whose bonus is based on denying care).

I assume people who are paid more also typically receive better benefits

Dev costs are around 40-45 USD per hour for a lower average in Ukraine. Annual salary would be closer to 90K.

Is that 90k the "lower average"? In Ukraine? I find that very hard to believe. Even here in Czechia that would put you firmly in the top 5 %. I don't think I personally know more than 2 people who make anything like that, and one of them isn't even in IT.

They're hired through a firm generally speaking. I don't know anyone that hires directly. So you pay for the overhead and HR management. etc etc

Top 5% overall or top 5% of dev jobs? Former sure, latter might be not? I live in Prague, and there are definitely multiple companies that pay more than 90k to middle positions. especially if it's before taxes.

That's right. 90k is the correct value for a mid-level (real, productive) developer across Europe. 40-50k is possible, but for entry-level positions.

If you look at engineering salaries in Germany, 90-100k is what you pay for a senior engineer or PM, not a mid-level one.

Salary is not the same as paying a contractor. So, while salaries for senior engineers is 100k, as a contractor they might be charging 150K per year ($75/hr).

Yes, true.

Is this the thing where the 99th percentile people somehow think they're the average? I see that a lot on Reddit for some reason.

It is a selection bias, plus perception that the people with more (the 0.01%) are a lot more common. "I dream of being rich, and to me rich is..."

More specifically:

To be in the top 10% of earners in the USA, you need an annual income of at least $148,812

To be in the top 5% of earners in the USA, you need an annual income of at least $352,773

The median salary in the USA is approximately $59,428 per year