I know many people in defense contracting, between 0-5 yrs experience and I know they start @ 50k. I work for 3 different telecom companies in SD and their salary are quite similar. I know 10yr+ experience engineer getting around 110-130k. Just look at salary.com, their range is very true to real life. So again, to make 100k, you need at least 7-10 yrs experience. You can’t really compare the peak of the .com bubble with current wages, it just doesn’t work.
