I'm just going to go out and say it: Europe is poor. At least compared to the US. You can see this plainly when comparing GDP per capita but it's particularly telling when you look at the revenue of tech giants, such as Alphabet and Meta. For example, Alphabet made roughly 50% of its revenue from the US and about 30% from EMEA in 2025.
Now compound that issue with conservative investors, a fractured "single" market and a strong preference for social equality over entrepreneurship.
> Physical losses in undermaintained water grids are the biggest cause for the issue.
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't that mean the water is returned back to the environment? It's not made unusable, nor does it disappear permanently.
This "greed" and lack of foresight underpins a lot of the welfare states of Europe. Many member states are doing nothing at all to account for this population shrinkage, much less plan for a world with less people.
Which in itself wouldn't even be a problem if lack of said documents caused your submission to automatically fail validation right at the start. Instead, a real, live person will need to review your request to verify that it indeed includes a full set of documents, said documents are genuine and "correct" (despite most of them already being issued by the government!) before approving your request.
> Why is it okay to be paid $100,000 for the exact same job as your equivalent counterparts in the US make 3.5x for?
I'm not going to say it's okay, but there are a few things to keep in mind. The most obvious is that salaries are not determined so much by how productive the employee is but by the relationship between supply and demand.
But that's not the really interesting part. The interesting part is that when you factor in taxes and CoL, you might be earning less gross but walking away with more money after paying taxes and living costs.
This is all contingent on said leetcode riddles actually helping with candidate selection. If they aren't, you've just limited your pool of potential candidates for no reason whatsoever.
Now compound that issue with conservative investors, a fractured "single" market and a strong preference for social equality over entrepreneurship.