Places like HN and r/CScareerquestionsEU tend to mostly attract career focused SW engineers who are always chasing to maximize compensation, interviewing, job hopping, sharpening their skills, learning new languages, having side projects, applying mostly at FANGs and product focused start-ups, etc. so it's normal for them to see high wages wherever they look, but when I look at my real world friends who aren't in these communities, nor are they too deep into chasing compensation or learning new tech, and are working at no-name companies, their wages are indeed quite low.
There's definitely different bubbles people live in, and this can skew your perspective either way, but I feel like HN definitely does not represent the average, but more the upper percentile.
Places like HN and r/CScareerquestionsEU tend to mostly attract career focused SW engineers who are always chasing to maximize compensation, interviewing, job hopping, sharpening their skills, learning new languages, having side projects, applying mostly at FANGs and product focused start-ups, etc. so it's normal for them to see high wages wherever they look, but when I look at my real world friends who aren't in these communities, nor are they too deep into chasing compensation or learning new tech, and are working at no-name companies, their wages are indeed quite low.
There's definitely different bubbles people live in, and this can skew your perspective either way, but I feel like HN definitely does not represent the average, but more the upper percentile.