Yes. This is an excellent point. There are some websites that show data for salaries (including outliers for extremely low and extremely high values). It is

Yes. This is an excellent point. There are some websites that show data for salaries (including outliers for extremely low and extremely high values). It is very much worth it to search around for them as opposed to asking other programmers. Some companies routinely pay up to double (or half) of the median rate, so anecdotes can give you very misleading numbers. $70K may very well be a reasonable starting salary for the OP. I think my main point was that $45K is at least twice the base pay for the plastics factory work (although that probably pays overtime), so even if being abused it still might be worth it as a stepping stone. I honestly wouldn't worry about having too many job switches at the beginning of a career path like this. You can always say, "I'm trying to get as much experience as possible, and accepted some jobs at a very low pay. I'm looking for stable work now, though."