High-Paying Remote is the new FAANG: Why Most Software Engineers Will Want Remote Careers

Some time ago, I published this article about leveraging a remote dev job to live in countries with low cost of living, paying low tax rates (under 15%).

About 4 months after, I am starting to see a lot of evidence of how this route is quickly becoming the most desired career and life path for most devs out there.

Explore 5,000+ top tech jobs across Europe →

Software Abstractions and Software Dev as a Commodity

Building software products and services used to be something that required a lot of handcrafting, and it still does.

But it's 2024, and we have been on a clear and decade-long path towards abstraction when it comes to building software.

Long gone are the days where being a Java or C++ expert was considered necessary to be a great engineer able to build something of high-quality.

Today, we have an infinite amount of libraries, APIs, cloud services and open-source software solutions, that it's hardly ever required to build anything from scratch.

The Modern Tech Stack Reality

A lot of the job has become gluing existing services together, in a way that serves a specific business purpose.

Most new startups, even those that operate at scale, use TypeScript or Python.

With just a few of them - that are operating on infra products, or for some particular reasons require very high level of performance or parallelism - leveraging also Go or Rust.

Tech Stack Component	2010 Approach	2024 Approach
Backend	Custom Java/C++	TypeScript/Python + APIs
Database	Custom built	Cloud-managed (AWS RDS, Supabase)
Authentication	Build from scratch	Auth0, Clerk, Supabase Auth
Payments	Complex integration	Stripe API
Infrastructure	Manual setup	Vercel, Railway, Fly.io
AI/ML	Research team	OpenAI API, Anthropic

If you're curious of how up and coming scale-ups decide on their tech stack, check out The Pragmatic Engineer as it has quite a few articles on it.

This means that there's a perspective where software is becoming more and more a commodity: easier to build, plug and play, pay to use.

With some intelligence and craft required to manage this process.

Compare your savings across locations →

AI: Another Abstraction Layer

I will write an entire piece around AI sometime in the future.

Long story short: in my opinion AI within software dev is yet another abstraction.

Basically: everything I've said in the previous section regarding abstraction, that happened in the last 10 years, just got a 2x/3x multiple on its acceleration in the past 2 years thanks to AI/LLMs.

Software Dev Market Becoming Efficient

Most markets are inefficient.

In general, most businesses make money by leveraging these inefficiencies:

• Real estate prices move slow, and oftentimes you can buy/sell something for a price that doesn't reflect the actual value - but where you can with a high-enough degree of certainty forecast the trajectory - and make a profit.

• Buying crude oil requires someone to ship it to you in barrels from the other side of the world, dealing with all kinds of vendors. This someone will take a cut.

• Drop-shipping items from china to Amazon EU/US customers, taking a cut.

Etc.

The Stock Market: An Efficient Market Example

The stock market, for example, is on the other hand quite efficient:

Assets are bought and sold digitally: they move fast, cheaply, and every market player has a clear view of the market and its prices.

This makes it hard for someone to "buy and re-sell and take a cut".

That's why most financial advisors out there tell you to buy index funds and not try to beat the market.

Because this market is quite efficient, and if asset X is priced at Y, unless you have some sort of exceptional edge, price Y will probably reflect the value of X.

The only players able to exploit the very minimal inefficiencies of the market, are - other than human traders acting on insider information - robots.

Namely, High-Frequency Trading (HFT) firms that optimise algorithms and compute to make the minimal gains per trade, and have a huge volume of trades in order to make a profit.

Offshoring: The Efficiency Driver

Software companies buy talent and computers and sell software products and services, making a profit.

2010: Effectiveness Over Efficiency

If it's 2010, and there's a clear demand for something they know how to build, and by buying talent in California and executing fast, they'd still be able to take market shares and make a profit, that's a win. They will do it.

In fact, they did.

Yes, in theory it would be more efficient to find these human resources in other places with a better price point, but, in business, effectiveness > efficiency.

If you're Google, and you know how to build a search engine that takes market shares and becomes a monopoly (which is much harder to compete against), you have access to funding, and you can hire and build quick, while still being ridiculously profitable, you'll do it.

2024: The Offshoring Reality

Fast forward 2024, and the situation isn't exactly the same as it was a decade ago.

Offshoring has become WAY more effective than it used to be.

Why offshoring works now:

Factor	Then (2010)	Now (2024)
Technology	Video calls spotty	Crystal clear Zoom, Slack
Talent pool	Limited	10+ years of CS graduates in emerging markets
Infrastructure	Unreliable	Same as West (fiber, coworking)
Time zone management	Difficult	Async work culture established
Legal/contracts	Complex	Standardized remote contracts
Trust	Low	COVID proved remote works

The technology and infrastructure is there.

Skilled people are there: young folks in emerging economies have been told for 10+ years now that working in IT a great way to make money and build a good life, and most emerging countries have a large supply of skilled tech workers.

Half the people at Google Zurich are Central and Eastern Europeans.

Half the people in Silicon Valley are Indian or Chinese.

Covid made us improve on processes and systems to get shit done remotely.

People also have fall in love with working remotely and with the flexibility it allows.

Also, make no mistake: even if offshoring wasn't necessarily super effective, it was so much more efficient that companies did it nonetheless.

Even 5 years ago, all of Central Europe and India had already received significant investments from American tech companies wanting to expand in the area.

After Covid and the changed interest rates environment, this has just accelerated.

Learn about the offshoring trend →

Basically, Software Dev Market is Becoming More Efficient

And this has implications.

There Will Still Be High-Paying Tech Jobs in HCOL Areas

(HCOL = high cost of living)

There are many reasons for this:

• International companies like to stay diversified, and not just rely on a few countries, governments or continents.

• They're global companies, and they will hire and sell anywhere that makes sense.

• The West (let's summarise like this HCOL areas such as North America or Western Europe) has a lot of talent, especially US tech hubs, because this is where most of the hiring has happened in the past. And global tech companies will likely want to have a presence there to hire some of this talent.

• The US has a relatively favourable environment for companies running high-performing organisations: contained employment taxes, easy to hire, easy to fire, top universities, hustle culture and young folks with big dreams being ok working their asses off, etc.

So it's not like all the jobs are moving offshore.

Also because salaries for top devs in emerging markets will keep rising.

The Three Categories of Western Tech Jobs

But in my opinion the tech jobs that will be left in the West will fall into a few categories:

1. Legacy companies with legacy teams that have a stable business and wouldn't want to disrupt it too much by hiring in the West and hiring East. Classic examples are Fortune500 companies and banks.

2. Local companies which are afraid of internationalisation and mostly build and sell in the same location.

3. International companies building the new frontier technologies: OpenAI, DeepMind, Meta, NVIDIA, etc.

Category	Pay Level	Job Security	WLB	Career Growth	Competitiveness
Legacy/Banks	$150k-$250k	Medium	Good	Low	Medium
Local companies	$120k-$180k	Low	Medium	Low	Medium
Frontier tech	$250k-$500k+	Medium	Poor	High	Extreme

Jobs in category 3 will be the highest-paid worldwide, and engineers in these companies will keep "being wealthy", despite the increased cost of living in their location.

They will also be super competitive jobs to land.

And they'll have poor WLB.

Jobs in category 1 and 2 will have increasingly low pay compared to the cost of living - with a few exceptions - and purchasing power of people with these jobs will be middle class.

Moreover, engineers with jobs in category 1 and 2 will face increased competitiveness as some opportunities move overseas, and I think they might live a state of fear of layoffs, as they're one offshoring-reorg away to losing their job and being in trouble.

Explore alternative career paths →

Western FAANG Jobs are 📉📉

FAANG used to be prestigious because it was good:

• Great pay
• Great job stability
• Decent WLB
• People with these jobs had both high purchasing power and high saving rates

Today, FAANG jobs in the West start lacking quite a few of these desirable traits.

WLB is Gone

Hard to feel a job as healthy when in less than 2 years 400k jobs were cut.

It's much easier to pressure employees in an organisation when they're scared of losing their job, and when the market for them is not so juicy.

FAANGs, compared to the past, are having a harder time to make money and face increased competition: meaning they care more about the bottom line and all the leadership is pressured to run lean and efficient organisations, where money isn't wasted (paying 300-400k+ for an engineer coasting isn't really an efficient way to allocate capital).

Pay Won't Rise

2010-2020 saw the increase in salaries for devs in the West, especially for those in big tech.

Today, we've reached a plateau.

Role	2019 Comp	2024 Comp	Real Change (inflation-adjusted)
Entry Level (SF)	$150k	$160k	-8%
Senior (SF)	$350k	$380k	-3%
Staff (SF)	$500k	$550k	-1%
Entry Level (EU)	€65k	€70k	-5%
Senior (EU)	€130k	€140k	-4%

Stability is Obviously Gone

See layoffs.fyi for the data.

Purchasing Power Will Likely Decrease

If salaries have plateaued, and cost of living is rising, this means that purchasing power will diminish.

Read about layoff protection strategies →

Remote Work is 📈📈

Remote work isn't easy.

Let's start with this.

I don't want to paint a ridiculous picture of remote work being the easy paradise everyone has access to.

Remote jobs are competitive, especially high-paying ones.

But, as the tech employment market becomes more efficient, I think we'll see a stable rise in remote and offshore work.

Think of Yourself as a Single-Person Company

Who takes in money from tech companies, and spends it on your life, as one variable (money from companies) stagnates and/or goes down, you still have the opportunity to focus on the other variable (life costs).

Companies become more efficient, and you, as a "software dev output" provider, can become more economically efficient too.

Getting a 200k+ remote job ain't easy, but getting a 50k one isn't that hard if you're a bit capable.

$50k is already plenty of money in a long list of places with contained cost of living, high quality of life, and contained taxes.

Remote Salary	LCLT Country Examples	Annual Living Costs	Annual Savings	Savings Rate
€50k	Georgia, Bulgaria	€15k	€35k	70%
€80k	Poland, Romania	€25k	€55k	69%
€100k	Poland, Cyprus	€30k	€70k	70%
€120k	Poland, Cyprus	€30k	€90k	75%

Compare this to:

• SF: $150k salary → $90k after tax → $70k costs → $20k saved (13% savings rate)
• London: £80k salary → £52k after tax → £40k costs → £12k saved (15% savings rate)

Calculate your optimal location →

Lifestyle: Remote vs. Office

This is a tricky one.

I don't want to get roasted, but in my opinion the majority of devs doesn't really have that great of a lifestyle.

Especially in big tech.

I worked in a lot of different companies including a few big techs, and I think oftentimes the lifestyle just isn't there.

The Office Reality

I don't want this to sound like I want to 'bully nerds'. I am a nerd too.

Also, lifestyle is very personal and what is good for someone might not be good for someone else.

But I think we can all agree that commuting everyday to an office that looks like a warehouse - or a kids' theme park in the best cases - hangout with a group of people with extremely low diversity (basically male, nerdy engineers), with a boss looking on your shoulder, forced chit chats and social time with people that you wouldn't necessarily choose as your friends but just happen to work with you, isn't all that great.

The Remote Alternative

Imagine, on the other hand, having the freedom to choose when, how and where to work, with whom to spend your social time, being evaluated on your output, having less office politic, saving hours in commute time every week, and I think it's quite easy to see how remote work gives a hands-down better lifestyle.

Factor	Office Life	Remote Life
Commute	1-2 hours/day	0 minutes
Social choice	Forced colleagues	Choose your community
Evaluation	Performative presence	Output-based
Office politics	High	Low
Time freedom	9-6 rigid	Flexible hours
Location	Fixed to HCOL	Anywhere you want
Personal life	2-3 hours/day	5-6 hours/day

This has to be worth something.

For more on building a sustainable tech career with better lifestyle, explore our career planning guides.

Remote Work - Reality Check

Some companies are calling people back to the office.

And, surprise surprise, other companies look very much forward to poaching the disgruntled employees working in companies doing RTO.

If you have a high-paying job in the West, it's possible or even likely that you'll get called back to the office.

After all, lots of companies there have spent billions in office space, have an "onsite-first" culture, and look forward to leveraging a RTO to do another round of layoffs without having to pay severance (because some people will spontaneously quit).

But There Still Are Plenty of Companies That Want to Leverage Remote

To avoid paying real estate, being able to hire and retain great talent at better prices, build a culture that is more resilient towards the future, because it's clear that devs want the freedom to work where they want.

Remote-first companies still hiring:

• GitLab (100% remote)
• Automattic (WordPress) (100% remote)
• Zapier (100% remote)
• Datadog (remote-friendly)
• Stripe (remote-friendly)
• Most Series B-D startups

Find remote-friendly tech jobs →

Conclusion

I believe in what I say.

I might very well be wrong.

These are just my opinions.

And I'm just a "broke and lazy" European dev :)

Yet, I like to act based on what I know - then if I'm wrong, I'll course correct in the future.

The data is clear:

• FAANG jobs: declining WLB, stagnant pay, low security
• Remote LCLT jobs: better lifestyle, higher savings, more leverage

The choice is yours to make.

Related Resources

• Top 3 Career Paths for European Developers
• Leveraging Low-Cost Countries as Remote Developer
• How Remote Jobs Protect from Layoff Anxiety
• Should Software Engineers Move East?

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is remote work really sustainable long-term or just a temporary trend?

Remote work is here to stay as a significant portion of the tech job market. While RTO (return to office) has affected some companies, 20-25% of tech jobs remain fully remote—that's hundreds of thousands of positions globally. The key factors making it sustainable: (1) Companies save massive costs on real estate, (2) Access to global talent pools increases competition and quality, (3) Employee satisfaction and retention improves dramatically, (4) COVID proved productivity doesn't decline remotely. The market has permanently split: big tech mostly on-site/hybrid, but startups, scale-ups, and remote-first companies continue hiring remotely. Target remote-first companies from day one, build strong async communication skills, and you'll have sustainable 10+ year career paths. Even if one remote job ends, your low burn rate in LCLT gives you 12-24 months runway to find another versus 3-6 months in HCOL.

How do I actually land a high-paying remote job from scratch?

Landing €100k+ remote roles takes 6-12 months of focused effort. Prerequisites: 3-5 years experience (junior remote jobs rare), strong portfolio/GitHub proving independent work capability, excellent written English (crucial for async communication), solid technical skills to pass remote interviews. Strategy: Apply to 50-100 companies across multiple channels—remote-first companies (GitLab, Automattic), US startups Series B-D (AngelList, Wellfound), EU scale-ups (Bolt, Klarna), consulting platforms (Toptal, X-Team). Expect 5-10% response rate, so volume matters. Easier path: Get hired on-site first, work 12-18 months proving yourself, then negotiate permanent remote (60-70% success for top performers). Alternative: Start with €70k remote role, grow into €100k+ over 2-3 years with strategic job hopping. See our remote job strategies guide for specific tactics.

Won't my salary be significantly lower going remote versus on-site big tech?

Yes, but your wealth accumulation will be higher. Compare: (A) Google SF $220k → $130k after tax → $75k living costs → $55k saved (25% savings rate), versus (B) Remote €130k → €115k after tax → €25k living costs → €90k saved (69% savings rate). You save 64% MORE despite earning 41% less gross salary. Over 5 years: Path A saves $275k, Path B saves €450k ($485k equivalent)—76% more wealth. Plus LCLT advantages: buy property in 3 years (€200k vs $1.2M in SF), 24-month runway if laid off versus 6-month runway, extreme negotiating leverage, better lifestyle and WLB. The "salary cut" narrative misses the point—optimize for savings and lifestyle, not gross comp. Many engineers earning $300k+ in SF with $400k net worth would be better off earning €120k remote with €300k net worth after same years worked. Check our financial data calculator to run your specific numbers.

What about career growth? Won't being remote hurt my progression to senior/staff levels?

Remote is excellent for IC (Individual Contributor) career progression, harder for management track. IC career remotely (totally viable): You progress based on shipped projects, technical depth, and impact—all measurable remotely. Network building works via Twitter, LinkedIn, conferences, and open source. Salary grows through strategic job hopping (arguably easier remotely with more options). Typical progression: €60k → €100k (years 0-3), €100k → €140k (years 3-6), €140k → €180k (years 6-10), €180k-€250k senior IC/staff/principal (years 10+). Management remotely (harder): Visibility for promotions lower, office politics matter more, in-person mentoring difficult. Recommendation: If you want IC/technical leadership path (architect, staff engineer, principal), remote works great. If you want to become VP/C-suite, probably need on-site at some phase. Reality: Most devs prefer IC path anyway (better pay-to-stress ratio, more interesting work). Your €180k remote salary at 45 years old with €800k net worth beats the stressed EM making €200k with €400k saved.

Is FAANG really declining or is this just negativity bias from recent layoffs?

It's real decline in value proposition, not just negativity. What hasn't changed: FAANG still pays well ($150k-$400k), good for CV/learning, work with smart people. What has changed: (1) Job security gone: 400k+ layoffs 2022-2024, constant pressure/fear, (2) WLB gone: Return to office mandates, pressure to perform to avoid "low performer" label cuts, (3) Salary growth stagnant: 2024 comp ~same as 2020 despite 25% inflation = real pay cut, (4) Purchasing power declining: $400k in SF 2024 feels like $300k in 2019 due to CoL increase, (5) Culture deteriorated: From "change the world" to "hit metrics or get cut", (6) Early retirement upside gone: Stock growth slowed, equity packages less lucrative. Still worth it if: You're optimizing for brand name on CV, need intensive learning phase early career, can get $400k+ staff/principal level. Not worth it if: You want security, good WLB, high savings rate, location freedom. FAANG isn't "bad" but it's no longer the dominant best path it was 2010-2020. Alternative paths (remote LCLT, Switzerland, specialized startups) offer better risk-adjusted returns for many engineers. See Europe vs US analysis for detailed comparison.

How do I know if remote LCLT is right for me versus traditional tech hub career?

Choose remote LCLT if: (1) You're mid-career+ (3+ years experience)—easier to land remote roles, (2) You prioritize financial freedom over prestige—save €70k-€90k/year toward FIRE, (3) You value location freedom and lifestyle—work from anywhere, no commute, (4) You're comfortable working independently—less mentorship, (5) You want extreme leverage—low burn rate = never desperate, (6) You're IC-focused—not climbing corporate ladder to VP. Choose traditional tech hub if: (1) Early career (0-3 years)—need mentorship and learning, (2) You value brand names—want FAANG on CV, (3) You want to reach management—need office visibility, (4) Your network is your priority—in-person relationships matter, (5) You prefer structure—office environment keeps you productive. Best strategy (hybrid): Spend 2-3 years in tech hub (Zurich, London, SF) building skills, network, and CV, save €60k-€120k, then transition to remote LCLT for 5-10 years maximizing savings (€70k-€90k/year), accumulate €400k-€800k, then either continue (you love it), semi-retire, or return to tech hub from position of strength. This sequence optimizes both career capital and financial capital. Run your numbers at our financial calculator.