Second this. All due respect to intelligent, hard-working immigrants, the only reason for the screaming for more visas is to pay engineers below market value wages. Want good engineers? Pay for them, dammit! Supply and demand.
I find very hard to hire good developers in the Valley. Offering 140k does not help much, I always have to go the long route (convince them we're growing, find a personal challenge etc).
Ryan Smith (Qualtrics) said the same thing: some developers needed 2 years of convincing.
$140k could be competitive if it were possible somewhere in the Bay Area to rent a house (or get a mortgage) with space for two kids in a good school district for
$140k * 0.33 / 12 months = $3850 a month
But you can't find such a bargain today. Another 20%-30% drop in real estate prices would make $140k a living wage salary.
I remember we worked out that my ex-wife's $42k salary in flyover America was actually more money than Google's prospect of paying me $125k in Mountain View several years ago.
Real estate prices are like that in the Bay Area because of the disaster of failed housing and education policy in the region and the state. It doesn't have to be that expensive, but voters and politicos aren't going to fix it so you either live with it or move.
$140k just isn't that competitive anymore. I mean its a good salary, but not remarkable on its own. I know it hurts but your flavor of the month CRUD app may have been priced out of the market. Just like $800k isn't enough to get a non-distressed piece of prime SF real estate, even though it was in recent past. Times have changed. Sure, importing H1-Bs would reduce the cost of labor, but that's not the discussion supporters of the quota increase are having. At least in public. Although you know a Romney-47%-type discussion is happening behind closed doors with SV power brokers.
So 140k is just OK - what is good then?
What is your base salary and bonus expectation?
For example if I talk to a Netflix engineer and promise work-life balance (no weekend, 7 hr/day average vs 12 hr), I still need to go 180k+ with 2k bonus?
Glassdoor salaries are out of date, munging together years of comp and reporting them all as current. $160 to 180k including bonus/equity, and you're finally getting into competitive territory for poaching talent. You won't be best in class but you'll be better than average.
If you hired workers like you shopped for housing, getting rid of unrealistic expectations based on prices from years past, you'd find them much easier to recruit.
Seriously? It's very cost of living dependent. I'm not a greedy or ambitious person; money is merely a way to make people leave me alone so I can do stuff I enjoy. If I can get paid to do stuff I enjoy, so much the better. I need enough to pay for a house, utilities, groceries, etc, plus some to pay for toys/vacations and invest in retirement.
I don't know what the Bay area (or other metropolae) are like cost-wise, but judging from replies to your comment, my current wage requirements are well below theirs, but only because where I live is dirt-cheap (comparatively). Unfortunately, most offers I have received have also wanted me to relocate, and I flat out don't want to, especially while taking a virtual pay cut. Even doubling my current salary, as one recruiter offered, would only barely keep my same standard of living in New York.
All that aside, I don't consider myself a "rockstar ninja ubercoder". I don't think I even crack the top 25%; I might be in the top 40-45%. I could also be wrong. And much as I love writing software, I also like my other hobbies too much to work on software more than about 50 hours a week. Of course, I've always been of the opinion that it's not the hours that matter, but the value produced, and I'm always looking for ways to do things faster and with less effort.
Also, if you still hunger for talent, consider the fact that the cost of living is high due to low housing density.
Build more apartments and start hiring old people.