Folks if you’re at all senior don’t accept less than 200K. It’s the new 100K. And for the level of value you bring to the table you deserve at least a median house within commute distance of your job.
Contrasting anecdata: I'm over 15 years of experience, started looking while employed, and got a 200k+ job in ~1 month. At an early stage startup in Bay Area. (this year)
I wonder what we did differently. My approach focused on why I'm a unique value prop to my target market following the "What have you achieved for what type of company/project" positioning statement formula.
In my comparison, games is still falling in real time and I've found nothing full time for almost a year. But I also randomly got cold called for some part time work that keeps me afloat.
We're here looking at a heatmap of pay across the entire US, and in most of the US it like like refusing anything less than $200k would be insisting that you're in the 90th+ percentile of software engineers in your area, which is for obvious reasons not something everyone can get away with.