It&#x27;s probably both (although I don&#x27;t think people are liars--how does one benefit by lying to a bunch of people on HN?) Do a handful of engineers at a handful of companies make big salaries? Of course. But they&#x27;re outliers. There&#x27;s also surely selection bias at play. Do you think this site&#x27;s audience is more or less likely than a random sample of software professionals to know someone who makes &gt;$200K?