[thrwn_frthr_awy]

Unemployment services are ran by the state. The entry level Software Engineer salary by the state of California is around $64k, with senior level salaries between about $75-$105k in Sacramento. I do not know if if this is normal, above average, or below average when compared with other states.

[devonkim]

Virginia, DC, Maryland have similar cost of living but VA, MD, and DC have drastically different governments, tax rates, rights, and laws despite people working in roughly the same 40 square miles. Even a federal employee graduating and writing software should make more than that. Senior salaries are between $110k and $140k with not a lot of outliers on either end (the distribution matters more to me than a median when talking salary these days for white collar jobs).

California is a huge state and the Bay Area is going to have drastically different stats for even the same industry comparing San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Luis Obispo (yep, there's software jobs there too).