One issue in this community is its members being unable to understand what "average developer" actually means.

Let's make a deal: I will give you my CV and we can work through it to see what I need to improve. If you get me an $200k/year offer that lets me work remotely, I will give you 15% of it for as long as I work there.

[0]: https://hub20.io

European compensation is lower. Sorry, I shouldn't be generalizing to United States like I did.

That said, in Berlin your options for high comp are largely limited to the big tech companies. You can get some hints here: https://techpays.eu/europe/germany# (sort by total compensation).

My suggestion, if you really want to get those high value offers, is to identify the best paying names on that list and start applying now. Stripe, Shopify, Twitter, other big tech US remote companies primarily. Work with their recruiters to optimize your CV and update your study skills. Use the interviews as practice and feedback, because it will be better than just about any advice we can give you online.

Whatever you do, don't pay some rando from HN huge amounts of money for help. All of the information about interviewing at big tech companies is out there for free. Plenty of prep material to study from.

And it was on purpose. I know that HN is US-centric, but I lived on both sides of the ocean and as time passes I am getting more sensitive to this limited (dare I say privileged?) view from otherwise very smart and educated people.

My proposal was more of a provocation to see if you could really back up the statement that "it should be easy for good people to make that much money remotely or medium-sized city".

> information about interviewing at big tech companies

That's the other thing that bugs me a lot: Big Tech. If these salaries are only attainable at FAANG companies, then the road of getting 200k+ offers is no longer just about being "above average", but also to be okay in selling your soul by working in places that long stopped worrying about the welfare of its consumers.

They are not. Looking at LinkedIn I see many such salaries for engineers. At your experience level you would be making many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the US, even remotely.

Caveat, 200k would have to include bonuses, and not just base salary.

- it can not be a FAANG company, or any other company who makes their money by unethically exploiting consumerism, and/or advertising that abuses user privacy. These are non-negotiables. I want to sleep at night without thinking about how many people get screwed over for my benefit.

- things like "flexible schedule" and "work-life balance" need to be more than just wishful thinking. I have two small kids that are always going to be my priority.

If you are up for it, let me know your email and I will send you my CV.

balasuar @ gmail dot com

> Also the cost of doing something so small can add up when you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy.

The point being relatively easy if you fit a specific criteria (don't need flexibility, want to work long hours, have a above average CV, can live near a major tech hub, have no problem working for FAANG etc).

And this is why I made the proposal, it was a challenge to this notion that it is easy. I stand by the idea that is not, and I am willing to pay to be proven wrong.

It may not have been clear, but we agree.

Worst case, they can't find a job and nothing changes. Best case, I'd be getting a job where I could work from anywhere in the world and that would pay me 30% more than what I was getting previously.

I've been able to build and ship my own apps for almost a decade now and have never received an offer close to that, even in SF. Maybe things have changed in the last 5 years, but whenever I see the 200k figure I always have to scoff.

Skillset has nothing to do with this problem.

I'm an above-average-skill but ADHD / below-average-work-ethic software dev in Canada who just finished interviews and my highest offer was $150K USD. I only prepped algorithms for 1-2 months but have a feeling if I spent 4 months prepping, I'd be able to break into the mid to high 200K USD range. And this is well below what a lot of people are making in the U.S. according to levels.fyi and teamblind.com

I don't say this to make you feel bad, and I even agree that the average is of course lower (glassdoor says the U.S. average for software engineers is ~$108K USD though I suspect older data-points bring it down from the real figure).

But I think >70% of U.S.-based software engineers with >5 years of experience are capable of breaking into 200K USD if they spent 3-6 months preparing (depending on their degree of natural talent and abilities to learn, problem-solve, and retain information).

Of course, chasing TC is also not a fun treadmill to be on, so if you're comfortable, you should do what makes you happy :)

The point of this is to say that these numbers are very, very real, and even attainable for the majority of devs who set their sights on them, and it's kind of silly to scoff at them as you put it. The only important skills required are ambition, dedication, perseverance, and good research skills (which are among the most critical skills for software engineers anyway) to be able to navigate negotiations and the market.

There are companies that hire at average salaries. Usually targeting Radford database @ 50% or whatever numbers they think they can get away with paying.

The next cluster of companies pay well but not at FAANG levels. They pay somewhere around 80-90th percentile of salary data. They collect all of the best employees who either can't, won't, or don't want to get FAANG jobs.

Then the long tail of FAANG salaries occupies something like the 95th-99th percentile of salaries. These are the numbers you see on the levels.fyi homepage.

HN tends to over-emphasize the FAANG level salaries, but there are a lot of companies in the middle bucket that pay much better than average. You might have to network and work to find them, though. Staying at average or below-average companies too long can actually make your resume less attractive over time, so you have to put in some work to break out of the rut and into the higher paying companies.