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Comment by retube | Hacker News Reader

$100k puts you in the top 15%. Maybe that doesn't fit your definition of successful, but I'd argue that having a good, stable, professional job was not only successful, but being, in the majority of cases, off the back of a decent education, pretty fortunate too.

Source: http://www.americablog.com/2011/01/us-income-distribution-20...

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I just want to quickly point out that making $100K puts you into the top 6% with $150K putting you into the top 2%. The 15% figure is for household income, not personal income.

The income distribution tables from the last US census can be found at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/perinc/new11...

That list includes everybody in the US, gas station attendants and CEOs included. Computer programmers live in a tiny slice of that graph, way over on the right.

Well that's sort of my point. You're pretty fortunate if you've got that kind of job no? The problem is everything is relative. The banker who takes home a million probably thinks he's underpaid when he compares himself to a hedge bond boss. But sometimes you have to a look at the bigger picture.

Indeed. As you say (and I tell every dev I find whining about it), computer programming is the single best job you could ever hope for.

Where else can you convince people to pay you well into six figures to sit at home in your boxers and solve puzzles?

Of those industries, how many of them not only allow, but encourage you to work short contracts at your whim, allowing as much free time in between as you'd like to spend that massive overpayment.

A good developer can produce so much value in such a short time that companies can afford to pay you pretty much any number you can say with a straight face. And if they balk, the bad/cheap developer they hire in your place will teach them such a lesson that when they finally come back you can double your figure again and they'll probably take it.

I tell ya, I used to bag groceries for a living. It was nowhere as good as this.

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