I make exactly half of that here in Florida (a fairly low cost area) as a senior dev and my salary has definitely plateaued (and I haven't had a raise in a few years).
I know I make more than most of my peers and local recruiters scoff when I tell them my current pay (I had to talk my current employer up about $30k just to match my salary at my previous employer to get me to switch -- and they only did so because they were quite obviously desperate).
And then remember that this is just base salary. Usually, the RSUs are almost equal to the salary when granted, and sometimes double in value over the four years they vest.
http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE&job=SOFTWARE+ENGINEE...
Let's say you work in downtown Tampa and live 30-40 minutes away. You can get a 4 bedroom 2500 sq ft house for $350K. That's about 3 years salary for you.
Now let's say you get a job at Facebook and want to find a similar house, about 30-40 minutes away. I think it will cost you upwards of $2M. You need to be making $670K or more to make housing the same fraction of your living expenses.
Your quality of living and long term economic prospects are probably significantly better where you are.
And when housing is the same fraction, the disposable income after that fraction is removed is far, far higher. As Bill Gates says, once you can afford the $30 burger, there's nowhere to get an even more expensive burger.
I have friends in low cost areas that make around what you're describing. They don't continue doing that because of willful disbelief, they understand that they could move and make 2.5x their current income. They just like the lifestyle. Which, totally makes sense to me. It's an amazing lifestyle.
On the other hand, competition for dev jobs in general is so fierce (as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin) that I can't imagine it would be difficult to fill those same positions at a significantly lower salary (or total comp, whatever -- I've never held a job that pays equity or bonuses in any non-trivial amount).
The recruiter explained how they could easily pay me a $140-160K base and give me about $40k in RSUs to get me up to $200k if I was the right candidate. I'd never heard of RSUs before that and he had to explain what they were to me.
The easy with which it was offered definitely helped me understand why $250k in total comp was definitely something that could be done at the bigger tech companies
Still the same problem of most being unwilling to pay for talent, but those who are still aren't having THAT easy of a time.
No, no, no. Not even close. At my last gig, we would interview for months to find a decent candidate. We were no AmaFaceGoog, but our pay was decent and the work was interesting. The supply (here in the Upper Midwest), definitely does not outstrip the demand!
This is so much the exact opposite of everything I've experienced that I have a hard time believing it. Finding good developers is near impossible, we regularly interview people for months before finding someone halfway decent. And the last time I looked for work I had several offers for remote positions at east coast companies, which makes it hard to believe this is a regional thing.
What sort of work are these great devs doing that is not in demand?
Where I used to work in the Midwest, we tried to have a similar hiring bar, but just couldn't get as many people. The best we hired were as good as anyone I've worked with in SV, but the worst... well, I won't get into that.
Assuming not, what's the compensation for the job? Have you tried posting the compensation for the job publicly?
The reason I ask is because as someone who works for one of the big 5, I don't even consider companies outside of the big 5 or top startups. As "cynicalkane" said: "Much of the industry is not only unaware of reality but refuses to believe in it. This includes real engineers who do real work at real companies and comment actively on Hacker News. $250k for a senior engineer is just completely outside their reality."
Are you offering 250+ for senior engineers? If so, broadcast it and people will interested. Else, I'll assume you are going to just offer non-market rates and waste my time.
Really, don't let the base salary numbers fool you. RSUs is where it's at.
I assume this is MTV/SVL/SFO/NYC? I'm sure you can find new grads who make less than that in other offices. At least I make less than that as an L3 in SEA