But I'm interested in your perspective on this. How much of it is dependent on region, and experience? If you do earn that, how long it has taken you to earn that salary and what your expertise is? I won't lie, hearing about earnings in USA do make be a bit jealous.
The thing is, $100k in 2001 has the spending power of close to $180k in 2025 -- $100k today is like a $55k salary then.
Hell, it's lost almost a fifth of its value since 2019, and this is if you base it on what the economists say inflation was (many others claim real, actual inflation is ~8% YOY, which would erode that value even more)
Location matters obviously; I know people in Los Angeles carrying $9k, $10k, $11k a month mortgages for nice but modest homes. I have friends paying $7k-$8k a month TO RENT out there! And they're considered middle class lol -- think about that, you'd be on the hook for $96,000 a year just to rent some regular-ass apartment! I can't imagine you could make less than $180k a year ONLY to clear rent, taxes, and afford food and transport.
I'm in the Midwest, a mortgage can cost you from $2k to $5k a month here, local-region dependent. Rent seems to start at $2k a month these days. You can definitely get by with less, but it's still a whole mathematical puzzle to figure out.
I understand European and Eastern Bloc wages are quite a bit lower than ours, and I don't really grasp basic costs over there for how it all works out -- but IMO, in the US, we're all just out here in the proverbial wilderness taking whatever we can get. There's no ceiling to earnings if you're motivated and lucky, but there's no floor either. You have to get up, get out, get what you can get, assume what you got is the last you'll ever get, rinse and repeat, and hope to your deity that things don't dry up.
It sounds like nihilism / pure chaos, but that's the culture we were born into.
Anyways, "big number" is always instantly more attractive to humans for some reason, but as always, the devil is in the details.
For example, if you live in a place where people make $12,000/yr, on average, then earning $24,000 is a nice living. In the US, software engineers often make north of $200k/yr, but a single family home in a lot of US cities is $500-800k, putting a new roof on your house costs $15-40k, and a dinner out at a sit-down restaurant costs $30-60 per person. If you earn $24,000, but it costs $8 to eat out and $80k for a decent house, that's not too shabby.
Where are you located, if you don't mind sharing?
Not accounting for taxation, other CoL and all that, but your example doesn't really work out.
Just to put this into perspective: In Germany average fulltime wage is rougly 54k ~= 34k after tax and social security. Average price of building a new 150 m^2 (living space) home is 400k-500k.
Ex: if everything is relative, and you can make double the average and save 10% regardless of location, you'd have a lot more savings if you lived where costs were much more, because 10% of $200,000 is a lot more than 10% of $24,000. And then after several years of working, you might move to the low cost area and retire. More likely, things aren't really that equally relative. So you'd want to estimate how many dollars you could save in low cost location and the high cost location (and add in factors for non-monetary concerns, like stress, natural beauty, access to things you like to access, and work authorization)
I would far prefer to make $200k and buy a $500k house than to make $20k and buy a $50k one. Similarly making $2m and buying a $5m house would be even better.
I'm Polish.
Here I'd say I can expect an average wage of somewhere around 6 to 8k PLN should I have few years of experience as a software engineer; that is around $1.5k - $2k ($1 = 4 PLN is a good estimate even if it can vary at times). Minimal wage is 3.5k PLN, so ~$880.
If you are “senior” developer at an enterprise CRUD company making $160K, do the leetcode grind and probably be down leveled to a mid level developer making $250K-$275K living in a high cost of living area , it gets more nuanced. If you are single and living in an apartment, the difference in rent will still make it worth it.
But if you are trying to duplicate the big house, in the good school system with 2.1 kids and a stay at home spouse, the numbers change where it’s not worth it.
This is your standard enterprise company - not even BigTech.
It’s currently a shit show now for anyone trying to get a job in CS with every opening literally getting up to 1000 applications a day.
My first job out of college (BS CS) a few years ago paid $60k; I got lucky and transferred into ML in 2021 and now make around the median you found (which sounds pretty accurate from my experience).
Software in the US does pay quite well, even accounting for the cost of living, which is high but not exceptionally so - comparable to places like Denmark or Australia. The lack of safety nets is a downside though; you can be fired without cause, warning, or severance, and then you're own your own for healthcare as well.
(Oh and I should add that the tech job market here is currently atrocious. I know several people looking for work and not even getting interviews. Might get better, might not.)
not so common for jr roles / small biz / non-tech companies
My first job in 2017 was for 130k iirc. I work on ML efficiency. You should check out https://www.levels.fyi/ for more details.