I'm running a 15 year old company in the Valley and have been a programmer here since 1987. I do salary research each year to figure out what people are making

I'm running a 15 year old company in the Valley and have been a programmer here since 1987. I do salary research each year to figure out what people are making so I can make sure I'd doing right by my people. I tend to focus on the .1% (point one percent) because my people are very skilled in their domain and I want to keep them. What's interesting to me is that there used to be a glass ceiling for salaries for programmers. It moved with inflation but it was very apparent (to me at least). When I was a programmer at Sun (1988-1994 or so) the ceiling was in the $130K area. If you wanted to make more than that you needed to go into management. That seems to have gone away. When I checked this year for total [1] comp package I found that it appears to be about $325K. Remember, this is the .1%, these are people that google and apple and facebook and netflix all know by reputation and they all compete for the same person. I dunno what a director makes these days but I'd guess that it is in the $300-400K range. The fact that an engineer, with no management duties, can make what a director makes is a relatively new thing. That didn't happen 20 years ago. To try and more directly answer your question, if you don't get the payout (and I would bet that at least 95% of programmers don't, there is a reason I go by "luckydude") then it is super hard to maintain a decent lifestyle on a single salary. I've got a guy working for me, I pay over market, he still struggles to make ends meet. He could make it easier on himself by living in a cheaper area but he has two kids, wants good schools, good schools are most of what drives housing prices. Too long; don't read: no kids means you can have fun, kids means you need two salaries. [1] Total comp: salary, bonuses, healthcare, 401K match. Salary != comp. Many, many people look at only salary. We pay full healthcare for the whole family, that's $30K or more per year for a family of 4. We dump as much as we can into 401K each year, that can be another $30K or more. Etc. Total comp is all of that.