Keep in mind Google is a massive outlier inside massively successful startups which are outliers inside SV which is an outlier inside...

Lots of places in the US are as far from those numbers as NZ. Google numbers should not be an reference point to almost anyone, anywhere or they're likely to be disappointed.

Serious question, how many years? I ask because 1) I make really good money now, especially if you ignore the SV/FAANG outliers that everyone here pretends are the norm, but it still took me 7-8 years to break 100k USD, in the US. 2) Maybe because there are so many new devs now but I hear people say a lot "I've been doing this for years!" then when you dig into it "years" means 2 or 3. These are also the same people who don't consider themselves junior 6 months into their first job, or consider themselves senior after 3 years. A career is 30-40 years long.

The median income for a dev in the US is 100k. That's going to skew down due to lots of juniors but it also includes everyone making several hundred thousand dollars a year. I am taking a pay cut down to 160 for better WLB on a product I have used for years as a customer and really care about, and I think if you ignore the outliers I am very well compensated at 12 YOE and existing domain knowledge.

I'm mid way through my second decade of professional programming. I'm still well below $100k USD. But I earn way above average for NZ.