Okay - reality check; a lot of programmers are bad. I'm in Austin and we have developers straight out of school at 70K+. If you're knowledgeable, have good com

Okay - reality check; a lot of programmers are bad. I'm in Austin and we have developers straight out of school at 70K+. If you're knowledgeable, have good communication skills, aren't a flake, and live in even a semi-major city (My last three stops have been Cleavland, Minneapolis, and now Austin) a six figure income as a software engineer is not difficult. If you're at 50k its time to start a job search.