These discussions feel good, but are ultimately useless. This is just going to be a collection of anecdotes from people who self-select to report because they feel good about where they're at, or because they feel righteously justified in complaining about their situation. And, as they say, the multitude of anecdote does not data make.

Unfortunately, salary "surveys," like the recently-reported Stack Overflow one, or the classic Computerworld one, are much the same. Self-selection ruins the data. The responses have to be random to be useful. And the silly thing is that most people who are involved in this business know this.