You will be the most important factor in getting that 6 figure salary, not the language you use. All decent programmers should be able to break down complex problems into smaller pieces and use whatever tools are at hand to solve the problem. It doesn't matter the tools you choose to use so long as you can adapt to the situations, learn how to use new tools, and get the job done well. I find the many people allow recruiters and HR departments to tell them what they are worth; based on prior budget meetings, market value, and what they feel the job is worth. A job interview is a sales presentation; you are selling yourself to them and they are selling you on their company. Plain and simple. Once they are sold on you, and you are sold on them, then its about negotiating a price that benefits both parties. Mind you that interviewing at these companies can be quite laborious task; some interviews can be hours in front of a white board writing code in response to questions, then answering a bunch of S.T.A.R. questions, multiple rounds of interviews, etc. By the time it is done and over with, as soon as they toss that old "market value" bit, i toss that out the window. The market isn't in this room writing code for you on the white board, answering silly college questions about algorithm run times, and self-evicting maps. Then start negotiating, if you have the experience, you showed them you have the knowledge, you can negotiate much higher salaries. The language is just a tool. You are what they are paying for, you have to be worth the money. For the record, I do make almost twice the salary you were asking about as a lead java developer, i know and have used many other languages, and the post someone made about quality of life should probably trump you want for a 6 figure salary. What good is it to make the salary you want, only to have to work 60 hour weeks and then your spouse leaves you and you paying them half your check plus child support anyways?

Even if you are surprised why is this a story? They are a business that owns a search engine, so #$@#$ what if they bias search results, what else would you expect from any business. This is just simple MS hating at its worst. I understand MS isn't the best thing out there and many, so called, geeks love their unix or linux distros but come on. Would this even be news if it weren't MS? Just stupid.

anyone else thinks this may have something to do with this: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/05/1555219/XML-Library-Flaw-mdash-Sun-Apache-GNOME-Affected

Wow they caught one guy out of thousands that do it. I doubt this will scare others into changing their ways. But it should hopefully force him to change his ways, since he got caught.