I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.
$11k makes roughly €9k.
If you work for a company in Germany this would be gross salary of roughly €6.5k a month. The rest 2.5k would be ancillary wage costs for the employer. That finally translates to €4k net after taxes including health insurance etc.
I believe many good engineers make that amount of money in Germany.
If you are receiving money as a freelancer you need to earn at least 50% more to get a similar net salary as an employee therefore a employee salary of 78k gross is roughly equal to a freelancer making 120k a year.
You have to compare net income as everything else does not make sense.