[ghaff]

It's not taken for granted in "the US" either except for maybe a tiny slice of people in a tiny slice of industry. The number of people who can quit their job on Monday and have their choice of six-figure offers by Friday--as some seem to think any developer who is half-trying can do--is miniscule.

[ryandrake]

There is a lot of mythology on HN that everyone writing software is making $300K TC, has $2M in their retirement account, drives a brand new Porsche, and has a supermodel partner. This is an outlier group of high-level engineers at an outlier set of top companies, in an outlier set of high cost of living locales.

[TheCoelacanth]

The time-frame is the only hard part there. A majority of software developers in the US make six figures[1] (this is BLS reported data, so it's far more reliable than the self-reported data from somewhere like Glassdoor).

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

[ghaff]

So the median salary for people actually working is just over $100K for all levels of experience. Which means that basically half of employed software developers in the US make <$100K. Yes, it's above the norm but less than a lot of people seem to think is easy to get.