@athaddeus Median income in the US is around $45k, while most studies have found most American's don't have a meaningful increase in their sense of satisfaction in earning until $75k, where beyond $120k, satisfaction really levels off. My opinion is that these feelings are largely a consequence of when a person's income level allows them to cover their basic needs, have an amount of disposable income to enjoy some amount of luxuries and cover their need for retirement investments to such a degree that they can achieve a comparable quality of life in retirement.
While people will typically think of CS jobs as "high" paying, the reality is that in general 'market rate' salaries across the board under pay employees as a consequence of statistical clustering in a sort of unspoken collusion by published statistics. Even at average companies trying to compete but still using an average salary as a basis for compensation, they're going to lag behind the reality of what is due compensation. Salaries are generally in this state of stagnation with a mounting tide of inflation coming. I would suggest you get what you can and if you get tired of doing what you're doing you'll at least have more than you would have had otherwise and that will buy you the luxury of time to reassess your needs. The real life advice is being self aware enough to know when you're ready to move on.
What you're compensated also has to account for the fact that you might not see any kind of salary increase for years, where by with inflation diminishing your earnings each year your level of earnings have to average out over the time frame until you reasonably can expect a raise. And if you don't think you ever will "enough" has to be a lot more. Even if you're completely satisfied at $80k a year, if you aren't thinking about how you'll get that up to $100k over the next 10-15 years, you'll wake up one day with a quality of life below what you had when you first started making $80k.
I see these sort 'humble' questions asked more often by younger people... there is a certain engrained naivety to it that companies love exploiting to pay people less than what should be reasonable. Lets reframe the notion of your question around how CEO's and executives pose it for their own benefit... "If I make the company a million dollars profit, how much of that should I get?" If your individual work makes your employer a million dollars in profit and you're only paid $35k, you're very likely not being paid enough. That situation is one where you could in theory go off with your experience and start working for yourself.
