Ugh, same thing happened to me. Bumping my salary from 55k to 60k was inconceivable, so I went to another company for 120k. (Turns out, the same skills you us

Ugh, same thing happened to me. Bumping my salary from 55k to 60k was inconceivable, so I went to another company for 120k. (Turns out, the same skills you use to make piece of crap parking meters/medical devices are needed to make smartphone operating systems) Then something similar happened again a couple of years ago.. The top local software companies in Japan were offended when I told them I'd been making 180k USD/year but would be willing to settle for ~140k USD to work for them. Anything over 120k was just unthinkable, and even that was a stretch in their minds. I didn't have much luck explaining that Silicon Valley firms are just going to roll in and eat their lunch if they don't hire people like me. It was better for my long-term savings to work 1-2 years in Silicon Valley, then hang around and be a jobless bum in Tokyo for 1-2 years than to work full time in Tokyo for 2-4 years. Moral of the story: Go where the money is