> Software devs a few years out of university in places like Atlanta and Boston made 100k 20 years ago. I've never worked in Atlanta or Boston but that does no

> Software devs a few years out of university in places like Atlanta and Boston made 100k 20 years ago. I've never worked in Atlanta or Boston but that does not sound right. Unless those cities were paying well over Silicon Valley salaries back then. Which I doubt. 20 years ago I was in Silicon Valley, already with a handful of years experience, at a top company and certainly not making 100K yet. Maybe I was super underpaid but according to the salary bands (which the company published) I was somewhat over the median. The SV compensation explosion first into the mid 100s and then into the stratosphere started later than that. In the late 90s into the dot com bust, software engineering was a well paying job but nothing special compared to other professsional jobs.