"Market average" is generally based on salary surveys, which kind of have to trim the extremes. So it's the median (ish), which is often lower than the mean.

I'm specifically talking about the companies that have told me they pay "market average" in New York City and are offering $45-55k and want a mid-level developer. Then act like their tenth of a point of worthless options are a winning lottery ticket.

I've found that there are other ways to scam those surveys. My employer uses an unreasonably low threshold of years of experience for a so-called senior level.

We hire a lot of H1B candidates, so I'm convinced that the point of the scam is to depress wage scales for the LCA.