This hacker news paradox always pops up, where people say this isn't common, but literally every SDE I know, even those straight out of undergrad, makes more than that all-in.

Maybe people are only looking at base salary instead of total comp.

If anyone’s curious what the going rate is these days, visit levels.fyi and read some threads on Blind. Senior SWEs often land over 300K TC at the big companies.

And outside of those areas, usually in finance, specifically trading shops and specifically very skilled people doing low level algo multi threaded type stuff. I've also heard of some good starter salaries at Atlassian which means it might be possible that the seniors there can get $150K US +.

I've seen that compensation in Seattle, Denver/Boulder, Portland, Chicago (quant trading + Google n co), Boston, Austin, LA, Houston (two sigma). Some cities that had salaries that almost got there (100k+): Pittsburgh, Dallas, San Diego, Cincinnati (saw a 110k job ad, didn't interview, that would be a great comp to cost of living ratio), Madison WI, Atlanta (really close to 150k+)...

To check, usually you can find examples on h1bdata.info

In Boston, I found a $100k job straight outta college and I know my seniors are paid twice me. Basically, you're wrong.

How common is that though? Your example doesn’t necessarily make the parent comment wrong.

..add "Seattle" to US cities with decent numbers of software engineers making $150k+.

Not common in San Diego either... the sunshine tax is real.