One option is to emigrate to the United States, driving up pressure on the engineers who remain. My near-term ancestors all left Germany due to poor wages and a tendency for Bismarck to sacrifice draft-age men in wars, and while moving to the US helped their own status it also did a bit to increase pressure at home.
Pre Brexit, there was > 500 million people in the EU with free movement between member states, most tech companies still sourced a substantial number of their employees from outside the EU - some even had majority non EU tech employees. The only jobs filled by locals were those which had artificial cap on employee numbers and local regulations(accountants/legal) Whilst some of these engineers were A+ level brilliant,…
I think most people are mediocore, and doing mediocore jovs -thats ok
Keep in mind that this allowed some compabies to afford half-decent engineers whereas they would nornally only be able to afford junior talent. Whether that works out to a net benefit is ofcourse debatable.
I personally find that a lot on management of engineers in UK is shockingly inefficient. I dont kniw what its like elsewhere, but i recon average 'efficiency' is under 50%