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Comment by PhasmaFelis | Hacker News Reader

That's not even close to true. The west coast is not the entire industry, no matter how much it likes to think it is.

It always makes me sad to see this same argument happen in every thread mentioning salary. Nobody ever wants to believe that their profession actually pays as much as it does.

Yes, you can certainly find a company to pay you less than $100,000 to program computers for a living. That's not in dispute. But know that you (meaning you as well as anybody else anywhere in the US or the English speaking world) can also find a remote gig paying more than that.

Good developers are very valuable. Even in the sticks. Please don't sell yourself short.

While I usually appreciate this kind of talk, it's irrelevant here. How much a theoretical developer could make has no bearing on the median developer salary right now, which is solidly below 118k.

Ha. That's a good one.

Employers appear to want you to be in at least a somewhat similar time zone as their core team and have some prior experience working remotely.

Take this hypothetical person living in the sticks. 3.5 years of experience doing local development. No prior remote experience -> not given the time of day by remote shops -> can't get remote experience.

As I said, it makes me sad. Because you're wrong. You've internalized this as though it were a fact, so you don't even try. And the only one it hurts is you.

You're assuming every developer is a "good" developer. The top 10% could probably find remote work, but the rest of us are stuck with what we can get. I've been trying to go that route for 3 years now and I'm at the point where I have to get a 'real job' to make ends meet.

Nowhere did I say I don't try. I do try. And in the rare instance that I receive a response, what does it say? Exactly what I said in my post.

It always makes me sad to see this same argument happen in every thread mentioning remote work.

Exactly HOW does one get $100,000 working remotely? When no-one's ever heard of you?

People should add a footnote when saying things like this.

"Yeah just get a six figures remote job......... if you have tons of experience/large network/expert on a niche/top open source projects".

> The west coast is not the entire industry, no matter how much it likes to think it is.

True, though many people live on the coast specifically because of its tech industry. Sweeping that away is no better than pretending that it's the only game in town.

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