every time rates come up on this website, people come out of the woodwork claiming "most" developers in every north american country make half a million or more a year. it's hard to not feel like this is just a few people using this as an opportunity to brag about their rates in niche industries (or people are just lying)

i have been a contract developer, and have worked at technical companies in canada, and have never seen rates that are even close (and im not a jr / have never used java for work outside of small amounts for mobile.) there's no way these rates are as common as you are all making them out to be, unless it's some niche, or you're talking about extremely short contracts, or there's some other missing piece of context