Building career in Europe

Hi,

I just feel like most of the advice about a software engineering career online applies to the US, and mostly to Silicon Valley, NYC, and Boston - big cities. After spending 6 years in London, I noticed these things:

1. FAANG companies mostly hire in the US, and the offices that they have in Europe are quite small, and when an interesting project comes up, it is often moved to the US. FAANG quite often have restrictions that when you want to get promoted to L7+, you have to move to the US.

2. Startups struggle to raise funding even in London. Closing B2B deals in Europe is really hard, so most of the startups try to find deals in the US.

3. There are barely any Europe-based scale-ups.

4. The most successful Europe-based scale ups are in the fintech - monzo, revolut, wise, zilch. Deliveroo got acquired by the US-based company - doordash. Babylon Health went bankrupt.

Are your observations consistent with this? How do you think about your career when you want to stay in Europe? What is your strategy?