Author here I agree with everything in your comment except the first line. I don't think software developer pay follows a power law, or at least not in this d

Author here I agree with everything in your comment except the first line. I don't think software developer pay follows a power law, or at least not in this dataset. Ignoring equity (which can cause power law type behavior if enough folks strike it rich), the distribution of pay is probably closer to a lognormal distribution. It's just not skewed enough to constitute a power law — that would imply serious skew. Additionally, this dataset excludes outliers making multiple millions of dollars, so that also reduces the likelihood of a power law-style distribution. Lastly, this dataset is only U.S. developers, so there isn't skew across meaningfully different geographies. With a lognormal distribution, your point remains valid, but the effect is not nearly so dramatic.