In short, he felt insulted by friend for laughing at his pathetic pay (since friend who makes only $3.3k can laugh at him, he's most likely making <2.5k)

Proceed to say that pay should be looked at work done per hour and somehow manage to convince himself his <2.5k pay in some SME is actually not bad.

If he is drawing 25k & friend is drawing 33k monthly, I can still accept the logic because of diminishing returns of money. But seriously below 2.5k!?!?!? Sorry, no matter what "angle" you look at it, it's a pathetic sum with a dead end career in a SME.