Don’t get me wrong. I’m not so deep in the tech bubble that I don’t realize that $120K-$170K is the the standard range that most of the 2.7 million developers in the US make. I was one of them for decades until 2020.

But at least from around 2002- 2008 and 2012-2022, if you have experience in a mainstream stack, and you live in a major metropolitan area in the US you could easily get a job that pays in that range without even coding interview, let alone a take home test.