I would be curious to know about the currently salaries. More than a year back I spend some some on the Matasano challenges, I think I did about half of them, I also read through half of 'Web Application Hacker's Handbook' which was sent to me. When I was at that stage,it occurred to me that I should ask about the salary, and I did that while talking to one of pen testers at Matasano. It was about $150k for the city of New York. This was not sufficient incentive to leave my job, the figure even seemed lower than what I earned if adjusted for cost of living.
I guess I don't know a lot about NYC living costs but $150k for what seems to be an entry level position seems generous to me. Even allowing $3k a month for a one bedroom apartment, that's over 70k in after tax income for other expenses. It's more disposable income that I have now as a senior developer working remotely, though granted my pay isn't great. Plus the position listed is also remote.
Perhaps I should rephrase my question and overall context, I think. I'm a developer with about 15+ years of experience. At the time I used to earn about $110K in a no tax state. What incentive would be there for someone like me to switch jobs unless they the pay is more than what I earn? I certainly don't mind taking a cut in my pay temporarily. But say within a year I expect to be making much more than what I currently earn.
Now while I agree with you that $150 may seem generous for an entry level position, a seasoned developer starting at an entry level crypto position already know a fair number of things that will help him significantly in his crypto job, and cannot be quite considered entry level.
I view having the developer skills as more of a prereq for the job and not really a bonus, but that's just my inexperienced opinion. All I know is that I'd be plenty happy with $150k working remotely, I'm currently making about half that as a full stack dev remotely.
The incentive for me would be that I'd vastly prefer a security job over making CRUD web apps all day. So I'd take the job even at a pay loss.
