$40k is extremely low for a senior role. Even in places like India or China.
A few very rare jobs at software companies in the US.
The BLS median for 2024 is way lower, at $110k. (Yet at the same time, still much higher than parent-poster's $40k figure.)
I'm not saying these jobs are easy, or easy to get, but yes, they exist, even in this market.
The reality is the biggest drop-off in recruiting is at the very top of the funnel. Your basic phone screen and first technical screen -- before you get to a full panel. Once there you have way more, qualified, applicants than roles. I'm not sure it really matters which person gets the job, and this is one way you can make a fairly arbitrary decision. It's nice because it's within your control to grind some leetcode lol. From the company's perspective it's fair and has limited negative selection risk, and doesn't lead to as many regrettable hires.
If you've got 100 great candidates and 1 role, does it really matter which great candidate gets the job, so long as the selection process is relatively fair and uniform? From the company's perspective, probably not.
Since there's no feasible way to select the local maxima, the second sort is consistency.
Sure, it is possible, but that is a small number of roles at a small number of companies, and the vetting process will be more intense. I think the coding interviews we're talking about in this thread are going to be at the junior to mid-level for the most part.
A quick Google leads me to believe there's usually about 15-20 A-list actors at any given time and 130,000 members of SAG-AFTRA.
I think it's certainly achievable if you put in the time and effort (and of course if you're good at your job) -- the question is do you want to or not. It can be incredibly demanding and may not be intrinsically rewarding to you. It seems folks generally believe "senior" is an achievable level -- they should, it's usually the first "terminal" level at which it's ok to remain for the rest of your career -- then you shouldn't view staff as intrinsically out of reach.
But no licensing!
Also you can get this pay outside the bay area, still in high cost of living areas, but for that pay it's really not an issue.
Are you in the EU? Salaries are lower across the board there for engineers.
In the US for Silicon Valley Type large Tech Companies the starting salary for New Graduate SWE's is 150k USD on the low end.
For a senior engineer at FAANG it can easily get above 500k USD.
Most jobs are not FAANG or FAANG adjacent.
This sounds interesting--what did you work on?
