It s very US centric as well. I disagree there s a shelf life for a known technology since the skillset you require as a programmer is more to adapt, work with a good speed/quality compromise and connect with your business/users beyond the minimum.
I wouldnt know the real US wide situation, but I ve worked in continental Europe and Hong Kong, and we have nice salary but well far from 300k a year (I reached 100k this year with 7 years of XP, in an investment bank and I think Im paid at the average).
Programmers, in my experience, are still paid less than profit-incentivized workers like sales traders or trading floor quants. But you could say a quant is a programmer and skew the pay up I guess. Just dont let them near your source code (as a Quant you dont get the variable pay part of your big salary if you do enough quality to have version control :D)
I wouldnt know the real US wide situation, but I ve worked in continental Europe and Hong Kong, and we have nice salary but well far from 300k a year (I reached 100k this year with 7 years of XP, in an investment bank and I think Im paid at the average).
Programmers, in my experience, are still paid less than profit-incentivized workers like sales traders or trading floor quants. But you could say a quant is a programmer and skew the pay up I guess. Just dont let them near your source code (as a Quant you dont get the variable pay part of your big salary if you do enough quality to have version control :D)