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Nope, not really.

According to various sources the number of software developers in the US is around 3.3 million (https://dqydj.com/number-of-developers-in-america-and-per-st...). Even by a pessimistic estimate, let's say that 25% of these have very high salaries compared to the average or median wage in the US. Either because their seniority or because they work for big companies.

So that would mean something like 0.8 million.

Now, on top of that, add associated engineers working for tech companies, add middle managers (which are generally paid more than individual contributors), etc., and it's easily 1 million highly paid individuals.

Just think about it: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Netflix, Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Uber, HP, Verizon, AT&T, Intuit, ServiceNow, VMWare, Salesforce, Workday, Dell, Intel, Qualcomm, Ebay, Paypal, Activision, and probably another 1000 companies with at least 1000 employees in the US, that I don't know. Plus non-tech companies that have huge tech departments, such as Walmart, and that pay salaries that are competitive with the ones paid by purely tech companies.

On top of that, American software devs have no idea how good they have it. In Europe getting 100k as a fresh grad is impossible even in Switzerland (Switzerland having much higher salaries than the rest of Europe), unless you work for... a US giant (FAANG). And those spots are a minuscule part of the tech world in Europe. And now imagine that Europe is better off than 95% of the rest of the world.

The idea of a regular Joe Developer having a decent shot of having made (made, not saved!) a million by the time they're 35 is frankly ludicrous for most of the rest of the world.




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