[monoideism]

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the median salary for software develors is $103,000. Top 10% earned $166,960 or higher. Take out the cities I mentioned and those numbers are even lower.

If you know plenty of people outside of the major tech big cities (and I should have included Austin and Seattle in that, for sure) making over $200,000 year, they you have a statistically unusual sample of friends.

All the data back up what I'm saying. Go look at the numbers. Look at salaries on monster.com or your favorite job site. Perhaps you and your friends don't realize how unusual it is (granted, you also have higher cost-of-living in those cities, sometimes by enough to eat up the additional salary).

[Hydraulix989]

Base salary is only one portion (usually less than half) of total compensation. Also, these engineers that I am referring to do not have the entry-level title -- they are often "senior software engineer" or "technical lead".

Maybe I should revise my claim to "top software engineers make over $200,000 in Austin, Pittsburgh, Seattle, etc.".