Hacker News Reader

Comment by 746F7475 | Hacker News Reader

It just constantly bogles my mind that apparently everyone in the US is earning six digit incomes on yearly bases. Either my family is poor (which I never thought) and I'm currently working for practically free (since I'm earning less than $40k/yr) or everyone over in the US is just way over reporting their incomes or value of goods is just so different that things some how equals out

View on HN

http://imgur.com/5bxGwMl

Some commentary:

1) 7 million households (can be single or married people) earn over $200,000 per year in the USA 2) 25% of US households make less than $25,000 per year 3) 25% of US households make more than $100,000 per year 4) Median income for average US household is $53,000 5) Asian/White households are significantly higher, 70-90k per year

So I'd say not everyone is making above $100,000 per year but quite a large number are... say 31.1 million households (8-9% of the US total population)

One thing to keep in mind is that HN is very focused on startups and Silicon Valley where salaries are very inflated. In Atlanta, a good average starting salary for a junior dev would be 50-70k.

I have 2-3 years experience on the platform I work on and I'm expecting to find my next job soon somewhere between 80-100k.

You're working for practically free (or to be specific, for less than $20 an hour at a 2000hr/yr base.) Redo your resume and get it out there. Get some offers, ask your current job to match them, and if they don't, leave. If we can fight for $15 at McDonald's, as a programmer you should at least be able to hustle $30.

possibly relevant: I'm not in SF, I'm in the midwest.

You did read that they were located in Finland.

If you take into account healthcare, college education and housing costs, all quite low in Finland and completely out of control in the US, your $40K may be not that bad.

It also might just be that I'm a recent graduate and as such my current employment brings in (literally) 9 times as much income as I've used to have for past 5 years (since I moved out from my parents), so I have more money than ever, but it might level off as I get used to it, but it's just been 6 months, so I'm still constatly surprised when I see my bank account's balance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com