[cableshaft]

Yeah, helped confirm what I'd suspected for awhile now. Chicago is garbage for compensation compared to other major cities. It's apparently difficult to break six figures as a senior dev here, that really shouldn't happen.

Dammit, I don't want to leave, but I'm tired of seeing other places get 50-150% higher salaries and bonuses.

[throwaway56609]

> It's apparently difficult to break six figures as a senior dev here

Where did you hear that? If you're a legitimate senior dev with marketable skills you shouldn't have a problem hitting six figures in Chicago.

[cableshaft]

Glass door salaries, salary ranges posted on stack overflow jobs (and other job sites), the salary ranges in the job descriptions recruiters send my way. I guess it's not too uncommon to see 110k or sometimes 120k as the max for posted salary ranges, but it's rare to see anything more than that. And the averages that I see is usually 90-100k. It feels to me like compensation should be much higher than that though, especially compared to other major cities (even considering the cost of living adjustment for SF).

I mostly look at .NET or iOS job postings, sometimes Python. iOS used to be higher, it seems to be going down lately. Pretty common I see ~90k for a senior dev posting for that.

Also, some of the jobs I get contacted about are video game industry (used to be in that industry), which are like 20% lower than other jobs on average anyway, especially around here.

[poikniok]

Have you looked at trading firms? There are many in Chicago that pay 130k+ base to new grads, with significant bonus comp.