I agree, except that I don't believe anywhere close to 10% of programmers working in the UK earn that much on salary. You're probably a senior at certain big name employers probably in London or possibly working at a FAANG or similar if you're making that as an employee today. Contracting and freelance work has a much higher ceiling if you're experienced, well connected and working in a high-demand field, but obviously that income is not directly comparable to salary because you have the downtime, overheads and loss of employment benefits to consider as well.

I earned very close to that this year outside of London. It’s definitely possible to live up north and earn that (working remotely)

I don't doubt that, but it's pretty rare. I know several devs in lead/expert positions(not in games, in finance, in consulting companies, in DWP and NHS) and no one breaks £100k/year. It happens, but it's very rare(in my experience).

I work for a large US tech company (not a FAANG). Getting in early on the Kubernetes bandwagon has helped me a lot . I used to work for a research consultancy and was paid significantly less then (but the work was a bit more interesting)