There are a couple of ways of looking at this, I'll give you my take. Simple answer, you are making a good wage for the experience you have. From your descrip

There are a couple of ways of looking at this, I'll give you my take. Simple answer, you are making a good wage for the experience you have. From your description I am assuming you only have 5-6 years of professional experience, with a bunch more when you were playing and learning. Frankly, even in NYC or San Francisco I personally think $145 for an engineer with 5-6 years of experience is a solid wage. The answer I really feel is correct. You are worth what you can convince someone to pay you, and not what the guy sitting next to you is getting paid. It really is as simple as that, although it takes some time to get into that mindset. Toward the end of when I was working for others (with one exception), I would negotiate based on what I felt my value would be and the highest amount I could get out of the employer. That may sound kind of greedy, but the fact is I knew I would deliver value far exceeding my costs and felt it was fair for me to try and capitalize on the value I created not an arbitrary salary based on what an employer paid others.