Ask HN: Show me the money – outside of Silicon Valley

[virgilone]

Over the course of my career, I've bounced back and forth between being a programmer(did not find it satisfying professionally so now I work on hobby projects) and being sys-admin. As of late a lot of head hunters I speak to are absolutely adamant about me presenting myself with a DevOps title to attract more employers. They just want to slap that title in. I was under the impression that Devops is more a culture thing a role, but numerous times, I've had tons and tons of head hunters in my area (massachusetts-greater boston) that want me to purge the sys-admin away and replace it with devops. I've been in this market for about 6 years now and I understand that changing industries and toggling between being a developer & sys-admin probably won't help my pay go up. At this point I'm really trying to figure out how to cash in. I understand that getting a great offer is combination of experience + skill + marketability. Say I have the marketability part down, I'm seeing DevOps roles (where its titled like that explicitly) go for 200k+ here and there and my eyes are popping out of my socket. Does OPs have a hire ceiling then being a senior developer? I've seen posts on hacker news where folks mention that highly skilled engineers can even shoot for 250k-300k. For some time I figured it probably was just a silicon valley thing, but would you say this applies in my market and other areas in the U.S as well?