$350k includes the salary but also all of the health insurance benefits, taxes, stock options, office space and perks, compute hardware, software services… the works. An employer will have an averaged overhead factor for their skilled workforce, which can be anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 typically. A worker with an annual pre-tax salary of $140k could cost Google $350k in overall expenses per year. Labor is expensive.

Also, these people weren’t just making simple Python scripts. Most of them were contributing core functionality into Python itself and managing the internal Python version and the ecosystem of Google software stacks that depend on it.

You get that working for Google in Bay Area if you're senior, no matter the language.

Those guys were participating in Python itself, maintaining the Python tooling for the whole company, served as a help desk for everything Python... Yeah I'm pretty sure they had a big salary.

It's not your little "glue libraries together" Python coding.

The Python team weren't just random folks writing Python. Several are core Python contributors who maintained official forks, ran library matching for internal software, and gave back to the language and community. They didn't just go for cheaper talent, they replaced some arguably irreplaceable engineers and shat over OSS at the same time.

Publicly traded companies do not have a duty to pay their workers, they have a duty to pay their shareholders and to maximize profits.

If you can get the same job done overseas for less money why would you pay american labor? what's the benefit?

Not saying I like the system, just saying that's how it is. Gotta have some kind of fine or penalty for outsourcing, offshoring and 1099 contracting labor if you really want to fix it.

Shit should be changed but the majority election system is funded by the ownership class who greatly benefits from this not changing.