What? Was everyone else at the company living in their car and relying on the food bank to feed themselves? Or was this in some strange ultra-low-CoL environment?
It was long ago, maybe 2009ish? Developer salaries were actually going down, IIRC, during this time. Likely due to companies exactly like this one and pivoting to more digital solutions. 100+k was very rare outside of SV. Adjusted for inflation, 30k is roughly equal to about 40-50k in todays dollars.