Tech is a pretty heterogeneous market. A senior dev at a big 5 tech company is going to be paying at least double that, and the quality they get is lightyears a

Tech is a pretty heterogeneous market. A senior dev at a big 5 tech company is going to be paying at least double that, and the quality they get is lightyears above the Senior Developer at Generic Widget Corp in Omaha. And Space X isn't getting Generic Widget Corp's senior devs, they are getting people who are downgrading their salary for a chance to work on something that excites them.