For software engineers, yeah.

I should've been more specific with regards to it being average salary for an engineer.

It's not at all a bad salary, it's actually a great salary but because of how many places do pay this well, places shouldn't have sky-high expectations of working six day weeks or constant crunch.

In SF 105k is poverty line.

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-s...

Yes, but you need to consider purchasing power parity and cost of living, as well as out-of-pocket expenses which in other countries might be included in taxes or paid by the employer.

The higher the pay, the higher the competition. Those $150k+ jobs are extremely competitive if they're remote. Senior only. No junior or mid-level.

The average developer looking for a remote job can probably expect closer to $110-140k as an individual contributor in a fully remote job outside of major cities. I'd say this is the majority of the volume of job openings.

Of course there's a minority that pay way more, but as mentioned, competition for those positions is extremely high. The only reason to pay $150k+ is if a company is looking to hire people extremely quickly and the company wants to pay at a level that makes it very hard for employees to jump to another job to earn more.

Source: My company hires engineers in the $120-140k range. We often talk to candidates who at first say they want $175k. We tell them we respect that, and to come back to us if anything changes. More often than not, they come back 1-2 months later asking for the job and happily accepting $120-140k. In the current market you really have to be pretty amazing in order to command $150k+ for remote jobs. For in-person jobs in SF or NYC, getting those salaries will be easier but you'll be paying extremely high COL.