I think s/he meant that if you earn 30k it's easy to be tempted by crime because the numbers are big. What night not tempt a Google engineer might tempt a telecoms infrastructure key from Anytinytown, Moldova/Romania/...

That said I don't think there are many good software engineers that earn less than that in Western Europe. Net maybe, but certainly not gross, and if it's net that covers anything from pension security to healthcare, meaning you can live a decent life in most places.