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Software engineers in the US make slightly above median income (EDIT: for a college graduate) wherever the job is located. In a second-tier city with national-median home prices, that could be $50k. In the Bay Area, where the Hacker News community is centered, $115k is the median household income and also the starting salary for new graduate software engineers at several big-name companies.

There's too much diversity of cost of living for an absolute dollar figure to be useful. I would look at percentile, fraction of median home price, lifestyle, etc. instead.