I'm getting $75k as a Python engineer with 5 years experience. Am I absurdly underpaid?
My job feels easy, I have flexible hours, little oversight, independence to build cool things, good benefits, and I feel very lucky that anyone would pay me so much money to sit in a climate controlled office playing with a computer.
As with any market based pricing its hard to say whether the price is right or wrong. Because the real price is what the market will bear.
I will say, for the broad outlines that you've given that is a low compensation figure. And projecting a bit, I can probably figure out why. First you said yourself, that you don't value yourself much more highly than you are currently getting paid. Why should anyone else?
Secondly, the way you present your product (Python engineer) lowers the prestige/premium it should cost. First, but least importantly, because Python, in general, pays slightly less than other technologies. Second, and much more importantly, being a programming cog to be placed into a programming assembly line is much less valuable than being a business problem solver that uses and builds technology.
I'd recommend going over to patio11's blog and reading:
I wouldn't presume to say whether you are underpaid or overpaid. But I will tell you this. I started at Google in the a little after the middle of the last decade, with no experience, just a bachelor's degree, not knowing my ass from my elbow. I started at $90k, not including $50-100k of stock and bonus, and was making nearly double that within a couple of years (certainly before five had passed). The fresh grad new hires today make a lot more than I did.
My understanding is that most of the big and medium names in the Bay are offering at least what I started out for people with no experience.
That said, my house cost almost $2M, and it is not a terribly nice house by the standards of anywhere but here. So . . . do with that what you will.
My job feels easy, I have flexible hours, little oversight, independence to build cool things, good benefits, and I feel very lucky that anyone would pay me so much money to sit in a climate controlled office playing with a computer.