[kasey_junk]

The third largest city in a given state could be anything from a million people to 30k people.

I wouldn't expect a town of 30k (or even 100k) to have that many jobs for developers as it's a fairly specialized industry.

50 years ago you wouldn't find actuarials or design engineers in small towns either.

[bobabooey02]

My point still stands. People In this thread are talking like $40k/yr salaries are unheard of, yet aren't acknowledging that the economy of the high growth cities is nothing like the rest of the country.

[kasey_junk]

But if there is 1 job in a 30k town and 100k in a city of 2 million, then the salary of that 1 job doesn't matter much for an average salary calculation.

For the profession of software engineer, most of the jobs are in the higher salary bands there should have an outside impact on the average calculations.