Your priorities are messed up. A self driving car for what, so you don’t have to drive back and forth between your $25k job?
They could be from a country with a lost CoL so $28k is a huge deal, they could be living the life they want doing a job they love, etc... Just so happens some future tech is interesting enough that they wish they could afford that too. Not everyone is in tech for the FAANG bucks!
Although if GP wishes they could earn more I assume any account holder on HN is technical enough to find a remote job paying more than that if they wanted.
Full self driving would complete change everything. I could look at jobs I've never even thought about, because of the need for transportation.