_throwawayyyyy1

one way i think about it ... imagine if google, facebook & twitter could somehow physically no longer link to news stories on any of their properties ... like if there was some magical switch that was thrown ... how much would their traffic fall, and how much would their revenue fall? I could easily see that being in the multi billions industry wide. so in that sense they are making money from news content.

indeed. as a sociable software engineer who appreciates the art of conversation, i often have a hard time getting the hang of the mood on my dev team. greetings are generally eschewed, even of the brief-eye-contact-mini-nod variety when passing in the hall. always have to remind myself i'm not getting dissed - they're just shy!

so glad i posted about my experience - posts like these have been eye-opening!

SF average is $126K per Glassdoor - so maybe there really is a much bigger difference than i thought. I feel like 5-10 years ago they were roughly comparable. Guess that's a long time ago in internet years!

Glassdoor has average boston Software Engineer salaries at $98K. Hmmm....

excellent points - thanks for this perspective!

I think it's possible - yes. But I kind of qualify those employers as "elite" here, and very competitive to get into - not average.

And if you want to count my pre-teen years coding BASIC games, total experience jumps significantly!

I'm in Boston & went through an intensive FT job search here about 18 months ago. I'm a mobile developer with 20+ years total experience in desktop, backend, web+mobile, product management, started my own company, etc.

Worked with lots of recruiters, personal network etc., felt like I really got a sense of what the salary landscape is here. Some facts:

- I was leaving a job at a hot unicorn startup that paid $125K base and I was told I was one of the highest paid engineers on staff (20+ engineers)

- I received 2 offers during this job search (was very selective else could have gotten many, many more)

- First offer: IOS developer at very large consulting firm for $120K base (with possibility of small bonus).

- Second offer: IOS developer position that was comparable in interest to first. Decided to "shoot for the moon" and ask for $145K. They agreed, and that's where I'm (happily) working now.

According to this study, SW engineers with my level of experience in these cities are making $181K on average! From what I could see that's just not available here to the rank and file, "average" experienced sw engineer. That salary would be more like top-of-range here.

Am I doing something wrong? Is Boston really that different than Seattle/NYC/SF?