You're living in a bubble where you've somehow been lead to believe that the only places where software engineering jobs exist is in the most expensive cities in the world.
These jobs are all over the country, that's just a fact, even excluding remote positions.
> The context of this thread is paying senior engineers the same as juniors, around $120k, which implies an expensive coastal city.
I never said anything about juniors, I said that seniors often make around $120k already and at some point there are diminishing returns on the business value of seniority for engineers. If my company is paying the senior engineering staff around $120k/ea why would we then pay a new-hire $180k because they have 25 years of experience when they likely produce work of a similar quality to our engineers with 15 years. I'd be much better off hiring a new engineer at $120k and using the difference to provide raises to my core engineering team that hold onto critical business process experience. Of course, exceptional candidates can command an exceptional salary, but they're the exception by definition.
Looking on Glassdoor for places where $640k is a great house - Omaha, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Akron, Des Moines, etc. - the median software engineer there is making $70-80k. Great money, upper middle class in context, but not $120k.
$120k seems unrealistically above market, even for a seasoned old pro, in such places. Am I off base?
Of course if you're paying it there, then it's an extremely lucrative gig. But as far as I can tell, there are maybe a few hundred such positions in the country.
https://www.sokanu.com/careers/software-engineer/salary/
These jobs are all over the country, that's just a fact, even excluding remote positions.
> The context of this thread is paying senior engineers the same as juniors, around $120k, which implies an expensive coastal city.
I never said anything about juniors, I said that seniors often make around $120k already and at some point there are diminishing returns on the business value of seniority for engineers. If my company is paying the senior engineering staff around $120k/ea why would we then pay a new-hire $180k because they have 25 years of experience when they likely produce work of a similar quality to our engineers with 15 years. I'd be much better off hiring a new engineer at $120k and using the difference to provide raises to my core engineering team that hold onto critical business process experience. Of course, exceptional candidates can command an exceptional salary, but they're the exception by definition.