>5k sounds like an incredibly small amount of money. The equivalent of a week's salary in the US.

It's almost comedic how out of touch this comment is. Reminds me of this[0]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw

$5k/week is $260,000 per year, which would put a person in the top 98% of earners in the US.

definitely top 98%, maybe even top 2%

Careful, you are incredibly out of touch with reality

5k is a lot of money to the vast majority of the world. It is a considerable amount of money to most software developers.

It's two laptops. Hardly a king's ransom.

To some people it's more like 20 or 30 laptops, and is certainly "king's ransom" territory.

My two laptops cost $600; $300 each.

That's not a week's salary for most of the US, maybe in SV and NYC. $5k/week is $260k/year. The median salary in 2019 was apparently $107k or so for software developers, which is more like $2k/week. I wouldn't expect it to have more than doubled in the past 2 years.

I don’t have the formal education or know how to get hired as a developer, and make 35k a year in Seattle doing non-developer stuff. $5k would be pretty neat. It does remind me of the height of the flash game period though (where I started programming!)

Haha at your edit, you really should take the advice of the people replying to you. Making 5k every few weeks is still close to a 90k a year salary and about 30k more than the US mean.

>whether it's literally a week or a few weeks my point still remains

Not really. It's several months' salary in Eastern Europe and closer to a year's in most of SEA.

You're also assuming that people are building businesses from scratch with the intention of selling them for less than 5k. They probably aren't.

$5K a week? That's about a quarter of a million a year ... is that a typical US salary?

No, not even for software developers.

Median household income in 2020 in the US was about $62k. Average was almost $88k.

It might be the average though for people who create projects people are willing to pay $5000 or more for.

Maybe. That group is still probably 0.01% of the US.

No, it's about 5x a typical US salary.

It’s typical tech salary for people with ~5+ years of experience doing something interesting.

Is it really or is it just in the SV bubble? Or is this a case of "it's not interesting if it's not in SV"?

Sometimes reading HN gives me the feeling that there is no "tech" other than FAANG in the US. Or somehow every little "tech" company is just making FU money, which sounds hard to believe.

No it's not [0]. I know HN is a bubble, a rich and successful one, but it's crazy how detached from reality some comments are. It borders between an extreme 'fake it till you make it' mentality and sheer trolling.

For reference, in my G7 country $5k are 3 to 4 months wage.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254530600A

> Or is this a case of "it's not interesting if it's not in SV"

This is a case of "get deep knowledge about something which can not be replicated by googling your way out". Become a recognized expert in compilers, OS internals, or similar areas and suddenly you get $250-300k anywhere in US/Canada. Europe tech salaries are much lower.

Maybe in a few tech/expensive areas of the country, but not for the average dev with way more than 5+ yrs in the average US.

Of course not the average dev. But once you are good at a niche topic, it is definitely the case.

5k is a months and a bit wage in Canada. I can build a lot of things that can be worth 5k to someone else in that time.

You are severely out of touch with anyone outside of rich America.

5k is a weeks salary? Thats 260k a year. That is executive salary and not common at all.

Not sure where you’re located, but as others have said, this is not an uncommon or unreasonable salary for a strong developer in certain parts of the United States.

You’ll have to work for certain companies in certain industries but if you value comp and you’re good at your job, this is very doable.