Your overall point stands, but I have a feeling it falls into the trappings of the biases of HN which are disproportionately drawn from SV and not normal for th

Your overall point stands, but I have a feeling it falls into the trappings of the biases of HN which are disproportionately drawn from SV and not normal for the general population. Case and point: >Let’s say you start your first job making $120k This may be normal in SV but it's not normal for the industry as a whole. The average starting salary is hard to find government statistics, but BLS says the average median mid-career salary is $110k.[1][2] AFAIK, BLS doesn't track starting salaries, but considering the median salary in [3] aligns with BLS data, it's probably not far off to say a median starting salary closer to $69k. That's just software roles and most other STEM positions are considerably lower. All that being said, I don't think it negates your point, but we have to be careful about generalizing using SV-like numbers. [1] https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1252.00 https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1252.00 [2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#15-0000 [3] https://appliedcomputing.wisconsin.edu/about-applied-computing/applied-computing-salary/ https://appliedcomputing.wisconsin.edu/about-applied-computi...