My first tech job wasn't event at a FAANG company and I made $110k right out of college. My next job was at a ~1,000 person startup and my salary was bumped up to over $160k.

Maybe it's a Europe vs US thing but it's definitely not the case that salary is poor outside of tech giants.

bay area? dang that's a lot. is that writing CRUD apps? EE PhD's don't earn that amount even with 2 years experience

If they specified "outside of the USA" then I totally agree, but the $80k bootcamp salaries are absolutely not from the tech giants!

> Here in Europe, €30K would already be a good starting salary. Personally, 10 years in, I don't expect to reach €80k.

That's on par with engineers in any other discipline. Except those have a Masters, not just a bootcamp.

Well in the Paris region, as an additional data point people with a master degree from rather good engineering schools get 35K - 45K euro.

Is that before or after taxes?

Convention in Europe is to mention the 'before taxes' number. To the best of my knowledge that is true for at least western Europe.