> How does anyone deal with this?

Options are:

- Stop caring

- Career-farm until you're no longer on the low end

Unless you're uncomfortably poor, I recommend the first one. It has a better track record of bringing personal happiness.

There are two sides of this:

* Those sites are BS (including Blind) and full of people both bragging, humble bragging, and lying

* You may actually be super underpaid and overworked and might want to look for a new job that treats you better

It's worth keeping both of these in your mind.

The psyche of the average Blind poster needs to be scientifically studied. There is something deeply wrong with the way those people talk (and presumably think) about money.

> * Those sites are BS (including Blind) and full of people both bragging, humble bragging, and lying

I've never wasted my time with Blind, but I've used levels.fyi as a guide for expectations/negotiations at three major tech companies and matched or exceeded the mean for my role all three times. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Edit: I'll also note the most recent was 2 years ago, so if it's gone downhill recently I would not have captured that in personal experience.

Levels.fyi compensation is really specific to FAANG-types of companies. Most companies hiring software developers don’t have similar compensation packages.