[ryandrake]

Software Emgineer V on Salary.com represents the tippy top outlier of the elite senior engineer totem pole. It’s a stretch to call that an average anything. For a more realistic median salary range, just look at the figures for plain Software Engineer.

[scarface74]

The Software Engineer V salaries at salary.com for the cities that I'm familiar with seems to represent salaries for a developer/architect with 10-15 years of experience who avoided management.

But the idea that software developers can't do well in other lower cost cities without working for a FANG or even companies that most people have never heard of is another example of the SV/HN bubble.