[CliffyA]

This is Melbourne, Australia.

I'm the following is not very scientific, but just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from.

Firstly comparing just the numbers of jobs (even tho this is probably a bad time of year near the holidays):

PHP Jobs, 100k/year minimum: 3 added today, 7 the day before https://www.seek.com.au/php-jobs/in-All-Melbourne-VIC?salary...

C++ Jobs, 100k/year min: 0 today, 1 yesterday https://www.seek.com.au/c%2B%2B-jobs/in-All-Melbourne-VIC?sa...

And some of those aren't even C++ jobs, switching sorting from date to relevant gets you C++ jobs from 14 days ago that would already have moved along in their hiring process.

As a cherry picked example, dropping down to 80k/year there's this Embedded C role that requires specific experience in card payment software: https://www.seek.com.au/job/33166443?type=standout&tier=no_t...

To me those requirements seem stricter than what i see in the PHP jobs (experience with MySQL + some form of MVC framework). And on top of that it's paying less.

Another example is the finance job I applied at that was paying 70-90k. But to get in the high end of that range you would need previous stock trading software experience. They also wanted 5 hours of my time for the interview process, but that's a separate topic.