Spoke about the USA because its the country I have experience with, and know how to find employment data for. I think it would be equally as interesting if someone could do the same for other countries :). I'd really like to know what is mid range and top end developer pay in India and how it compares to toptal rates.

I was just in India, working at a startup and doing recruiting, and it varies extremely widely. It's not the most relevant to this thread, but here's what I found:

- Fresh out of a top college at a large firm: 5Lk/yr ($7.5k USD)

- Shown yourself to be good, at a small startup, one or two years out of college: 10-15Lk/yr ($15k-$22k USD)

- mid-20's developer at top-notch tech firm: 20-30Lk/yr, can go higher ($30k-45k USD)

- engineering manager or top engineer at a top startup: 30-45Lk/yr ($45k-67k USD)

- VP, CTO, etc - 50-60Lk/yr ($75k-90k USD)

- it can go up from there, I've heard of 1crore+ salaries...

Lk = Lakh = 100,000 rupees.

Crore = 10 million rupees.

Note that about 15-20Lk would provide a similar lifestyle to that of a young in SF earning $100k USD, by my estimation (nice apt in the center of the city, going out to nice restaurants & pubs regularly, uber & food delivery daily, etc).

Also note that there are extremely few Indian developers on Toptal currently (I have no idea why). Maybe two or three in the entire network. There are also relatively few American developers (I'm not sure if it provides much value if you're a well-connected American developer; it's more helpful if looking for quality clients is a problem).

EDIT: Just wanted to add that the weekly rate I was paid on Toptal (they charge/pay weekly) for part-time work, ~20h/wk, was in the "engineering manager or top engineer at a top startup" range – in other words, way above the top 1% of developers in India. So I would say it can compare extremely favorable, but then developers set their own rates on Toptal so not everyone would earn as much.