The thing that Ive found is that once you get into the upper-tier range (I define this as 125-150k and on average seems to include people with 5 to 10 years exp

The thing that Ive found is that once you get into the upper-tier range (I define this as 125-150k and on average seems to include people with 5 to 10 years experience) it gets harder than before. My first 5 years on average I had great raises - 15-20% on average (all mostly from job changes). Now it seems a little bit harder - I most likely can go out and convince someone to pay me 5 or 10k more but I feel my head starting to skim that glass ceiling. There are things I could do to change - I could go find a job doing financial transactions or blindly go work for the highest bidder with no care work conditions and other things, etc. The point being is that developer salaries in the first part of the career can go up relatively fast but in my opinion top out relatively quickly (not such a bad thing necessarily). I think from there you need to go out on your own if you want to really make more.