Funny enough, I just posted a comment about this the other day, how basically every SF/NYC company that has gone full remote could cut their employee costs by nearly 2-3X by switching their dev team to a European time zone. And this is including all the extra taxes involved with having employees there.
And I'm not talking about having to hire in Romania or something (where you could save 4-8X or more). You could hire the top 5% of talent in expensive cities like London and still cut your payroll costs by 2-3X
You can't save that much by hiring in Romania. The differences between developer compensation in europe don't follow cost of living differences, an average software engineer in Poland is likely in a better position when compared to an average Pole than an average software engineer in France vs an average Frenchman.
Maybe 10 years ago I hung out with a Java developer from Hungary for a while, he worked on stuff for Lufthansa. Hopefully I'm not remembering this wrong, but I think he told me his salary was like 1000EUR / month after tax (maybe even less) and that he was still able to afford a large house for his wife & kids and everything he wanted.
There are many companies hiring Brazilians for the same reason, since 1 USD is 5,56 brazilian real and 1 eur is 6,30 brazilian real, it's dirty cheap to hire brazilians on these conditions!
And I'm not talking about having to hire in Romania or something (where you could save 4-8X or more). You could hire the top 5% of talent in expensive cities like London and still cut your payroll costs by 2-3X