Cheap for an engineer in some parts of the USA. Can we please stop pretending that (what are in most of the world) large amounts of money are actually small potatoes. It is not ignorance, you know you're better off than the rest of us so please stop pretending like it's nothing.

that's a typical engineer salary in a funded startup or a big tech company in basically any U.S. city that has funded startups or big tech companies.

I know engineer pay is lower in some other countries. UK comes to mind as particularly awful for engineer pay. Still, the context of the discussion is in how much it costs _the company_ not how much it costs the engineer. It's small potatoes for a company.

And 80% of the software engineers in the world aren't in America.

If you think the countries like the UK where pay is lower than the US, which is the highest in the world, is "particularly awful", you might be living in a bubble.

Not to mention plenty of people making less than 100k even in the US, even for big tech companies you've heard of in big cities like Seattle and New York.

I'm a bit disappointed in the accusatory tone of your post. Literally everyone is in a bubble. My bubble is New York City. What's yours?

There are zero humans anywhere in any time or place that have global awareness and are not bounded by their personal experience and local context. So what are you even trying to say?

Yes, yes, of course we have limited experience. However, there are more than a few things that every functional adult is expected to be aware of. The scale of global poverty is certainly among them. For software developers, it's not unreasonable to additionally have some passing familiarity with the going wages for similar work in other countries.

For the people lucky enough to be living in the world's number one economy, in an expensive city, in a well-funded startup or an established tech company, 100k is "not a lot" and spending $1500 on a chair can seem something other than absurd.

The other commenter that you replied to above pointed out very clearly that this applies only to some parts of one particular country, and it is perhaps not very polite to act like this is completely unknown to you.

You responded to this from your bubble, and then defended yourself against me by saying that we are all in a bubble. Well, no kidding, but some of us at least try to be aware of it!

Now are you starting to get even the slightest idea of what I'm trying to say?

We have quite a bit of people here on HN making over £100k in London. I wouldn't say UK is "particularly awful".