These salaries seem SUPER high. Developer with 10 years experience at 120k? I'm making less than half of that and don't feel particularly ripped off.
(I guess both of our comments don't help a lot in general, except to show that you personally don't seem to consider an application at SO while I'd love to do just that)
A competent developer with 10 years experience at less than $60k gross?! I imagine any sized company in any location in the US would hire that person in a heartbeat. If you are a productive developer in a common programming language with 10 years experience, you have decent communication skills, and are able to work in a team, earning less than $60k -- then you are significantly underpaid.
My starting salary was higher than your 10 year experience salary. You are WAY off the grid, even with quality-of-life arguments factored in. Unless you work less than 30 hours a week, you ARE getting ripped off. I don't know anyone who started with less than 60k other than my brother who was 3rd man in at a bootstrapped startup. If you enjoy your job, awesome. However, you're very easily in the bottom half of starting salaries if not lower.
I'm being ripped off too. graduated during the recession after the dotcom bubble, took the first dead-end dev job I could find, not exactly marketable experience.
I'm a developer with 10 years of experience living in the midwest and I'm making over 120k. Based on their calculator I'd actually take a reasonable pay cut if I wanted to go there.
I graduated 1999 and made $38k; Now make $190k (and I'm definitely not a top 1% candidate).
Based on your assessment, I should expect to make a lot less in the future. But, yet people are contacting me weekly saying they can't fill positions at my salary level.
I'm a developer at Stack Overflow, my salary is $2,000 a year more than what the calculator spits out with Developer / 5 years experience / 3 skill (I was a 2.7 last compensation review, I believe)
Take that manager salary and switch to 'Developer' and the salary drops by a few grand, at most. Maybe in some companies - but I'm the lead of a project, responsible for multiple devs, projects, etc, and I'm only getting a few grand more than a dev who's only responsible for their own work...?
(I guess both of our comments don't help a lot in general, except to show that you personally don't seem to consider an application at SO while I'd love to do just that)