Thank you for your honesty. It's incredible how many pedantic boomers / europeans regularly browse HN.

Working on figuring my way out of this!

(incredible that in 2025 this is getting downvoted on HN)

When the average US salary is something like 45k, $150k is a high salary especially when you have no plan or clear path to the goal

Based on your comments in this thread, I'd suggest that soft skills could use a refresher and might be the difference between getting something and getting passed over again next time - good luck, it isn't easy

To be fair to the OP, the median (so lower than average) salary for a single person with a bachelor's degree (in USA) is ~$80,000, give or take a few bucks.

The average is likely higher, and then higher again for higher COL areas.

So it's not unreasonable for OP to expect to start at this level, and work their way up to $150k over the next 5-7 years.

> So it's not unreasonable for OP to expect to start at this level, and work their way up to $150k over the next 5-7 years.

So you're actually saying that OP xpecting $150,000 now, given that is what they're expecting (and elsewhere they scoff at $200k), is out of touch.

But you feel compelled to say some people, with years of experience, make more? Yeah. That's sensical - but it doesn't apply now unless you think giving advice 5-7 years in advance is helpful when someone is looking for a job now.

Not talking about average US salary. The OP is a software engineer so we should be talking about average SWE salary bands. Even ignoring crazy FAANG/MANGO salaries, $140k is not “insane” in overall tech.