That way of looking at it doesn't really make sense. We know men make more money than women. The typical programmer is male. We know technical professions lik

That way of looking at it doesn't really make sense. We know men make more money than women. The typical programmer is male. We know technical professions like engineering make more money than say, working in retail. Most workers are not engineers. Right there your benchmark is going to be at least twice median household income and we haven't even added the fact computing has been the most influential industry since the railroads and steamships got invented. So yes, I am quite confident 100k is not a high salary for the kind of work being done. It would be better to compare many programmers to venture capitalists or inventors than other traditional white collar professions. I repeat my point from the above post. It is all about the scaling factor. I expect a programmer's work to attract white collar wages without the Internet existing. But with it, that's a different story. The fact there's more programmers to compete with is meaningless in comparison to the ability to affect the majority of people on the planet.