programer is paid well

That base is not at all unusual.

A few months ago, Purcell wrote on his blog that Valley salaries for programmers have hit record-levels in 2013, with no end in sight:

For the first time since I’ve been recruiting I’m placing Senior Engineers at base salaries of 165k. You would think that these would be big, profitable companies, but the companies paying those salaries range from Series A funded startups to 300 person profitable startups.

This year alone I’ve placed entry-level grads starting at 80k and generated an offer for a Java Hadoop candidate with only three years of experience at 175k. Salaries for Senior Java Engineers that my team is placing range from 140k on the very low end to 165k. Candidates with 3-5 years of experience are easily being offered 110k-130k base salaries with significant equity and / or bonuses.

These salaries are even more impressive when compared to the national average. Valley programmers are making a good $50,000 - $77,000 more, just in their base, according to research sent to us from job site Indeed.com.