We had code school grads asking for $110-$130. Meanwhile, I can hire an actual senior engineer for $200 and he/she will be easily 4x as productive and useful, while also not taking a ton of mentorship time.
Since even that $110 costs $140, it's tough to understand how companies aren't taking a bath on $700/day.
you can't have rent at 3.5k a month and not expect 6 figures when requiring in-office work. old wisdom of "30% of salary goes to rent" suggest that that kind of housing should only be rented if you're making 140k. Anyone complaining about junior costs in these areas needs to join in bringing housing prices down.
Bear in mind these types can explain things like why word-alignment matters and train themselves into being net productive within a few weeks.
Its even more frustrating knowing those people went through a overly long gauntlet and prevailed over hundreds of other qualified would-be engineers. Its so weird just seeing an entire pipeline built around minimizing this situation utterly fail.