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Comment by blackrock | Hacker News Reader

$45/hour is a good rate for Ukrainian developers, I think. Or Philippines developers.

That’s about USD $90,000/year.

This is good money, if you live remotely in a lower cost of living, foreign country. But it’s a mediocre salary in the United States. You can barely pay your expensive rent with $90k/year. Actually, you’d be at poverty level. And there is zero possibility of affording a house with this salary. But you might be able to eke by if you live in the less competitive Midwest.

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The poverty line for a family of 4 is $26,500 USD. [0] Median full time income in the USA is $35,977. [1]

90,000 is well away from poverty.

[0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_....

4 people? That's nuts I was making that washing plates as a single person no dependents. I think maybe less actually after taxes.

You were probably making that in California though, not WV or SC. Houses are less than a year of developer pay there.

I was in KS and I was just paid "highly" eg. $12+/hr although I was multi-role

edit: maybe less was making $11-12/hr and not full time, my math was off. I was freelancing on the side though before I got into the industry but yeah $20K range was my figure at that time eg. just over 3 years ago(it did suck, I was mad broke still am but working on it).

Wow, sometimes this site really needs to exit the stratosphere and come back down to earth. I live in the Midwest and you can comfortably pay a mortgage on a sizable house, all utilities, all necessities, and still have a shitload left over to play with on a salary like that. By no means do you have to "eke by."

I think the issue is a lot less that the Midwest is less competitive and a lot more that the cost of living in a West Coast tech bubble is exorbitant.

I'm sorry, but this is an absurd statement. You can live very comfortably the vast majority of places in the US on $90,000. If you can't you're in one of the most expensive cities, pay a huge amount of debt servicing, or simply have unreasonable standards of what you think "necessities" are.

The only issue is billable hours - will these be 100%? If the platform has that liquidity, then yes - if not, chasing assignments and lowering prices leads to a race to the bottom.

$45/hour can be $0 per year on SO. Adjust your expectations.

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