I would say from my experience that I could be making three times that of a junior developer at their first job, in my area. But I would not say that I am makin

I would say from my experience that I could be making three times that of a junior developer at their first job, in my area. But I would not say that I am making twice that of someone with half my experience. Someone that's just five years behind me is pretty much making what I'm making. This notion that experienced developers, as a whole in the industry, are making x times more than junior developers is nonsense. Utter nonsense spoken by people who have no idea of what they're talking about. It's true you can find outliers for that kind of thing, and I'm willing to bet they are specialty cases. Early in my career I would get huge jumps in pay when I proved myself at a project. Almost fifteen years into this career and I don't get those huge jumps in pay anymore after a successful project. Not because I'm not deserving of the praise, but I'm already paid well to deliver based on my experience. A junior succeeds and gets a raise; a senior succeeds and moves on to the next project. Could I get one of these mythical 300k jobs? I know I can. I'm willing to bet I could snag a 500k job if I pushed myself. But that would require sacrifices I'm not willing to make, give up hobbies that I enjoy, and live in a city I really don't care for. A city that would eat up the extra income anyway. I'm more than happy with my current job that pays well and I get to mentor juniors every day, which I enjoy.