Software was truly truly insane for a bit there. Straight out of college, no-name CS degree, making $120, $150k (back when $120k really meant $120k)? The music had to stop on that one.
Honestly it was 10 years too late. The big innovations of the 2010 era were maturing. I’ve spent my career maintaining and tweaking those, which does next to zero for your career development. It’s boring and bloated. On the bright side I’ve made a lot of money and have no issues getting jobs so far.
For example think of space x, Waymo, parts of US national defense, and the sciences (cancer research, climate science - analyzing satellite images, etc). They are doing novel work that’s certainly not boring!
I think you’re probably referring to excitement and cutting edge in consumer products? I agree that has been stale for a while.
Of course, that growth in wages in this sector was a contributing factor to home/rental price increases as the "market" could bear higher prices.
The issue is salary expectations in the US are much higher than those in much of Western Europe despite having similar CoL.
And $120k for a new grad is only a tech specific thing. Even new grad management consultants earn $80-100k base, and lower for other non-software roles and industries.
But in UK an Ireland they get free healthcare, paid vacation, sick leave and labor protections, no?
There's a reason you don't see new grad hiring in France (where they actually try to enforce work hours), and they have a subsequently high youth unemployment rate.
Though even these new grad roles are at risk to move to CEE, where their administrations are giving massive tax holidays on the tune of $10-20k per employee if you invest enough.
And the skills gap I mentioned about CS in the US exists in Weatern Europe as well. CEE, Israel, and India are the only large tech hubs that still treat CS as an engineering disciple instead of as only a form of applied math.
I happen to have a sibling in consulting who was seconded from London to New York for a year, doing the same work for the same company, and she found the work hours in NY to be ludicrously long (and not for a significant productivity gain: more required time-at-desk). So there are varying levels of "expected to work off the clock hours".
I pay over 40% effective tax rate. Healthcare is far from free.
But that's my point - salaries are factored based on labor market demands and comparative performance of your macroeconomy (UK high finance and law salaries are comparable with the US), not CoL.
I’ve never been to Boston. Why are the prices high there?
Think they're too high? You're free to start a company and pay less.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_metropol...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
More like it means ending up with government-provided bare minimum handouts to not have you starve (assuming you somehow manage to stay on minimum wage all your life).
The "min wage" of HN seems to be "living better than 98% of everyone else"
I mean a real wage associated with standards of living that one took for granted as "normal" when I was young.
If I took a job for ~100k in Washington, I'd live worse than I did as a PhD student in Sweden. It would basically suck. I'm not sure ~120k would make things that different.
The erosion of the standard of living in the US (and the West more broadly) is not something to be ignored in any discussion of wages.