Even in the states, it’s more a distortion caused by the big tech centres. A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer.
And while academic salaries are generally not great, tenured professors at big universities tend to make a fair bit (plus a lot more vacation time and perks than is normal in the US)
> A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer.
On the other hand, a CEO of a well-known nonprofit might command that kind of salary in Ohio. People often underestimate how much the leaders of nonprofits pay themselves.
I'm not entirely convinced that this is entirely some sort of widespread bad behavior. Many non-profit boards conduct research on salaries and essentially size their organization and pay something akin to a market rate for the given size and scope.
However, even a small percentage of bad actors finding a way to inflate their salaries will, as a side effect, inflate salaries across the board because it influences the process that sets the salaries for the honest organizations.
I suspect abuse is more prevalent at the low end, among nonprofits that don’t do much.
I stand by the point of my original post: People often underestimate how much the leaders of nonprofits pay themselves. These are figures you can look up and quiz your friends to test the hypothesis, if they’re into that sort of thing. For a good time include some nonprofit hospitals.
That's fair, but the boards of nonprofits are as corruptible (I'm reluctant to use that word since we're talking about fairly standard practices, not outright crime, but whatever) as those in the corporate world. But I wouldn't want to keep talking about this situation as if it's all theoretical. In contrast with a lot of the corporate world, with nonprofits you can just go and look at what their officers are paid (it's public record) and decide for yourself what you feel about the figures.
Sure, but the cost of living there is significantly higher as well. Anyway, I can hardly even comprehend these kinds of sums, though I am a bit of an outlier, as I earn around $27,700 as an SWE in Europe, which is low even by the standards of companies in my own country.
> Sure, but the cost of living there is significantly higher as well.
The US is huge though, and the cost of living is astronomically lower outside of those big tech hub cities. I live in a tiny town in the midwest with a big house and a big yard that we bought for $89k USD in 2016[†]. I'm able to support myself and my wife comfortably on just my (self-employed) SWE salary.
[†] Real estate inflation index for our area says the house would have cost us around $130-$150k USD in 2026.
Silicon Valley is the only place in the United States where $300K is even close to the "middle" of anything.
I just moved to SV a few months ago from the Midwest (and not a particularly cheap part of it). Telling my coworkers who aren't from the US what a house costs in Wisconsin, you'd have thought I was the one who moved from a foreign country.
As a datapoint, I get paid just under 250k/yr and I'm an above average developer in his very late career, at a midwest company. 300k avg for SV is about right.
The local college and medical administrators are the ones that own the mansions in my city. I have a family, house and mortgage plus my large medical expenses (cardiac) I can handle...until I cant.
Holy moly, $250 in the midwest? Where do I get your job?
For reference, I just left a position in the Midwest for a job in SV that pays a little more than you're getting paid. $250 but with Midwestern rent would be life-changing. Sounds like we're in very different stages of our careers, though.
> Silicon Valley is the only place in the United States where $300K is even close to the "middle" of anything.
It does heavily cluster around SV, for sure, but Seattle/NewYork/Boston/Arlington will all get you there, and Chicago/Austin/etc aren't all that far behind at this point
Not everywhere. Switzerland exists. Also cost of living is a thing so if anything US/CH just ramp up to match that. The rest of Europe has high CoL but terrible salaries. Asia has bad salaries but low CoL (on average).
According to swissdevjobs.ch[1], the top 10% salary for a senior software developer in Switzerland is 135,000 swiss franc; that's roughly $170,000 per year.
So if this is correct, then even in Switzerland, it seems like $300,000 per year would be an obscenely high salary for a senior developer.
Oh right, well it depends on CoL doesn't it? You can reframe European salaries as 'obscene' by world standards too. Both the US and Europe have totally broken and unaffordable housing markets, for example, but at least the Bay Area compensates with salary. I would say that relative to costs it's more that other salaries are obscenely low, if anything. People in Europe should be rioting, but unfortunately only the home owners are politically active.
Does cities like San Francisco not have janitors? Waiters? Food delivery drivers? Or do those jobs command a six-figure salary too? If they can live comfortably in the city on a five-figure salary, maybe the argument that "cost of living is so high in SF that you can't live without a $300,000/year salary" is just a little bit overblown?
I can not imagine what one could possibly need $300,000 per year for unless an apartment costs like $200,000 per year.
To some extent, maybe, but often not. For example, London has similar cost of living to the Bay Area, and when I was at Meta experienced folks like Dan Abramov over in London were making about the same as fresh college hires in Menlo Park...
The net salary in France might be low but the overall cost of hiring is quite high. Besides, why go to the middle when you can just find even cheaper places, if that's your prime metric?
The reason the French can’t build these things is the same reason they shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge. It’s a preprint PDF host. Just make your own if you can run this one.
HAL is decidedly second-tier. Given the option, everyone would pick arXiv over HAL. Hence, HAL hosts lots of stuff that didn't (even) make it to arXiv => lots of subpar dredge.
Turns out that "better" for many people means "better moderated", since static hosting is hard to differentiate. And at present Arxiv is winning that one (at the expense of considerably higher running costs due to said moderation)
The traditional definition of high income starts at 2x the median. Looking the US as a whole, anything above $125k should be considered high income. But it doesn't feel like that, because median wages are unusually low in the US relative to mean wages. Upper middle class salaries, on the other hand, have grown very high, and they have distorted people's perceptions. Even now, we are debating whether almost 5x the median should be considered high income.
And while academic salaries are generally not great, tenured professors at big universities tend to make a fair bit (plus a lot more vacation time and perks than is normal in the US)