Well, there&#x27;s really no corresponding data for many other markets .  Facebook and Google don&#x27;t really do Work From Home and don&#x27;t have a lot of remote locations for development depending on where you are. (Amazon is another example). I don&#x27;t know what they offer datacenter staff, but in many areas, recruiters are pretty adamant about people moving.<p>From my experience, say, the North Carolina scene, you&#x27;re lucky if you are going to get $120-ish with ten years of experience.  There&#x27;s some give or take, but includes large companies and banks.  You can do a little better at something like a Cisco if you are willing to trade quality of work.  Most big companies as well as startups are paying new grads somewhere in the low-high 60s or maybe 50s depending on where. I don&#x27;t have hard data, but it&#x27;s no where near $130k.<p>Data from cost of living comparison sites that some companies use indicates that these companies hiring someone in the bay area may pay those people 20% more for cost of living at most.<p>Startups pay substantially less on average, with senior level personnel getting around $100k, maybe $120k if you&#x27;re excellent and the startup is well funded - but this is 10 years of experience kind of stuff. I have unfortunately had to turn down some great folks because they wanted north of that - and they were worth it.  I&#x27;ve also seen companies where their maximum pay tier tops out at 135 for what amounts to principle engineer level positions.  (I&#x27;d assume a fellow at IBM would do better, but they are uncommon and few have a chance of surviving the machine to get there).<p>Conversely, really senior level software development positions at basically-exit-ready startups in CA aren&#x27;t going to be much better than 40-50% better than the above.  Some of these can be obtained remotely - sometimes.<p>What the article states as common for Google and Facebook are absolutely not the norm, and I&#x27;m not really sure how achievable that is for most people even there.<p>It&#x27;s great if Google&#x2F;Facebook can allow to pay people that, definitely.  I just wouldn&#x27;t say it&#x27;s even remotely common and does not translate.<p>I&#x27;ve heard some ancedotal completely crazy numbers from hedge funds that most people would hate working for elsewhere, but nothing nearing the numbers in this article.<p>I don&#x27;t really have hard data on the New York software scene or Texas, but .. again, this isn&#x27;t normal.  HN may be more of a microcosm than expected if most people do feel this is normal.<p>To put it in perspective, this is still amazingly high compared to a lot of other positions and you&#x27;d still have it really good.