Also the world is much bigger than the US.
Tons of software developer jobs in the US for non-FAANG tier or unicorn startup companies are >$100k and easily hit $120-150k.
Also the fourth quintile mean was like $120k in the US in 2022. So you'd be in the top 30% of earners making that kind of money, not the top 10%.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quin...
median salary for a japanese dev is ~$60k. same range for europe (swiss at ~100k, italy at ~30k for the extremes). then you go down.
Russia ~$37,000 Brazil ~$31,500 Nigeria ~$6,000 Morocco ~$11,800 Indonesia ~$13,500 and india ~$30k usd
(asked chatgpt for these numbers down there, JP and EU numbers are mostly correct though as I have first hand experience).
It would be interesting to know from where Chatgpt sourced those figures as some of them look very sketchy.
I imagine a lot of people saw $20k/mo and thought the salary clearly had to be $200k+.