There are superstars and slackers everywhere.  I knew a .Net developer who was getting $75/hr as a 1099 contractor (no agency) for 6 month contracts.  As far as the median goes, InformationWeek's 2013 Salary Survey has the median a bit lower than that also, so $99K does seem high. 

$99K/year ($49/hr) isn't that much any more - a cousin just got a manual labor job paying $39/hr, and off-duty Phoenix cops make a "reduced" rate of $50/hr to patrol our schools (according to Mayor Stanton).

Also, one employer I know pays H1B Visa workers $66K (that's what the worker's sponsor gets); now take off 30% for overhead, 30% for new Federal Tax withholding on non-resident aliens (obama never said he would not raise taxes on non-citizens), and that $66K just turned into $32K/year, or $16/hr.  With companies importing 166,000 new H1B workers every year, all of whom have Bachelors Degrees, many of them Master's Degrees, and they are willing to work for under $20/hr, where do you think your pay is going?  "Up" is not what comes to my mind :)

Cheers!

George Toft

On 5/3/2013 9:27 AM, keith smith wrote: