Linux

You point out that the comparison is unequal, but do you realize how unequal? Stockholm is the 102nd most expensive city in the world; San Francisco is the 13th. If you're going to compare salaries, at least pick a city closer to Stockholm, like Cleveland, OH (still more expensive at rank 84). 2.4M people live in Stockholm's greater metro area; San Fran is close to double that size at 4.6M. Cleveland has 3.6M in the greater metro area. Larger populations mean statistically larger employee pools, although economic focus plays a large part.

But regardless, my point was that $1M doesn't go very far, no matter where you hire your devs, if you at all care about quality. Even your $137k Swedish devs only get the Foundation one more developer, and less pocket change.

And Sweden losses if we're playing the "cheapest devs" game. If you at hiring and you want to get the most resources for the least money, you're going to look in Mexico or South America and get the advantage of more time zone overlap for the rest of your organization (if you're in the US); or you're going to look in one of the less-well-off EU countries, or even Africa if you're in the EU. Ukraine was a fantastic place to get great developers at good prices, although they're unfortunately being fucked over by Russia at the moment. Heck, if your leadership is in the EU, SE Asia doesn't look so bad time-shift wise, and India has a ton of tech hubs, still relatively cheap labor, and shitty labor laws. China has a great labor pool with highly skilled developers and relatively inexpensive prices.

But we don't want to play the cost game, right? It isn't about minimizing salaries - although it's certainly a consideration, it shouldn't be the main decision factor. Pool size of quality developers is near the top, but vying for that (IMHO) is time zone overlap. Maximizing within reason the number of hours your team has for meetings, so that nobody has to work outside of hours to hand meetings is critical. Language skill overlap is up there, too. Cost is no higher than fourth, and there might be other things that weigh higher - such as, do you already have a presence in that country. Adding another Ukrainian developer to the couple of guys you already have there might make more sense than hiring someone isolated in Portugal, even if they're cheaper.

I keep straying off topic, though. Again: the fact is $1MM doesn't buy you a lot of time. 6 US devs for a year, maybe. Getting them in Sweden might buy an extra two of months of time, which you might very well lose because those people geographically detached, and now you have to contend with cross-national tax and labor laws, which makes your payroll and HR more expensive.