Well, it's a starting point. When coming up with a salary range for themselves, candidates have more homework to do than to simply punch a few numbers into a calculator.
Any expectations of accuracy better than 10-15% are unrealistic.
In many markets 100K+ is quite nice for an MS-degree'd 20-something with a few years of experience.
But the point here is that it's not an average over many markets, it's for each market and how off it is for each market. This is why in my post I said it's off for SF. It might be true for other regions but it's definitely far off for SF.
Any expectations of accuracy better than 10-15% are unrealistic.
In many markets 100K+ is quite nice for an MS-degree'd 20-something with a few years of experience.