I'm intrigued by thinking about wealth vs income. To get to the 1% in income takes $250k a year, apparently 195k gets you to the top 2%. So in Seattle, that means that almost every software engineer at a big company (amazon, facebook, microsoft, google, etc) with 10 or 15 years of experience is probably in the 1%. Thousands and thousands of people. If I was a dental hygienist like my mom, or a teacher, I'd be middle class but not 1%.

We should constantly appreciate how fortunate we are are, those of us software engineers. I am hoping against my expectation that somehow there will be good jobs in the future for more than the 1% (bio-medical engineering maybe?).

> We should constantly appreciate how fortunate we are are

This only applies to a small fraction of engineers clustered in a literal handful of geographic areas. I personally don't know a single engineer in my country that makes $200k (and the cost of living here is just as high as any major US city). Earning half that is seen as a very good salary.

Well, I did say Seattle. Yes, I'm fortunate. I did move here for a good job 20 years ago. I would expect that west coast salary increases should also pull up the entire market.

> I would expect that west coast salary increases should also pull up the entire market.

Logically it should at least not hurt the rest of the market, but anecdotally : during my time in the midwest, salaries were stagnant / sticky around $80k so I would caution against overestimating the trickle down effect of coastal income.