Interesting. When doing hiring, I've always mentally divided developers into different categories than you've been suggesting:
- 65k (entry-level)
- under 100k (intermediate, or junior with a lot of promise)
- 100-125 - most of my hires have been in this range - mid-level, talented, solid programmers
- 150k+ - 'lead' / superstar level. It's very rare to find candidates that meet this level.
Beyond 150-200k range, most of the compensation tends to come from bonuses, stock, and options - which can vastly exceed base salary.
I had to massage a whole bunch of numbers from bls.gov to get this histogram (huge list of annual income per county per occupation group), it's not exactly the kind of data they like to publish :)
Of course this is 2008, mostly before the recession. Would be interesting to see if they got new data and how it changed.
And this is for all occupation groups, computer programmers are of course on the higher end of this graph.
And yeah, depending on where you are in the US, things you'd expect to be cheap in the supermarkets here generally tend to be a bit more expensive. Also because they always list the prices excluding VAT [in most states]. If they list the prices correctly, or at all. And actually charge you the same amount at the checkout. Outside of supermarkets, prices seem reasonable, until you find you need to pay 15-20% in tips because waiting staff doesn't get minimum wage [in most states] and it's up to the customers to make sure they don't starve. So yeah, not very developed after all :-) [also: healthcare. unless you're rich you get none. half the people on the street walk around with visible ailments of some kind. but I'm getting OT]
A bottle of coke, however, is much, much cheaper than over here. Also, bigger.
A 1 liter bottle of coke is about $1.50-2. Some people do have several large screen TVs. Mostly, though, college education is really expensive, minimum wage is comparatively low, medical coverage isn't nationalized, and debt is (or at least used to be) easy to acquire.
In other words, it's easy to come out of college with $50-100K in student loans. It's also easy to get a major injury without medical insurance, pay $10K out of pocket to rectify it, and rack up another $10-15K by living on credit for a year.
Paying a student loan of $60K over 25 years at 3.5% interest is $300 per month. Paying the medical bills of $10K over 2 years at 0% interest is $415 per month. Paying the credit card bills of $15K over 5 years at 14% interest is $350 per month. Ugh... $1K in debt payment alone.
As I understand it, Americans actually get/take far less vacation than Europeans. Couple that with comparatively no social services and this should start to make sense.
Beyond 150-200k range, most of the compensation tends to come from bonuses, stock, and options - which can vastly exceed base salary.