I wouldn't mind sharing, but I don't want to take the chance that someone in my company could be reading this. I started in 1963 at $1.55 an hour, which was actually pretty good back then. It's mostly been increasing, except for several years when I was self-employed. Now it's more based on my domain knowledge in healthcare fraud detection than on my seniority and skills as a programmer.

The salary curve along the career is as well interesting - is it always increasing, or having some drops?

Who cares about the money when one has an ounce of passion for it

Because you need money to eat and pay rent and most importantly provide for your family or offspring if you have any.

Yeah, I didn’t mean working for free, but working on a less glamorous salary with all the other human perks is sometimes just fine, especially if one’s done raising kids and does work to fulfil the calling

I can probably comfortably finance my family (2 kids, wife works part time) on half my current income, but I want to get paid as much as I can (it's not my top priority, but I certainly prefer more money than less).

Stuff like the comment you answered to is how the people pulling in the actual big bucks hope to get you to work for cheap.

I’m genuinely curious, why you curious? :)

Because money matters. There are good arguments for financial transparency.