Comment by Gigachad
3 years ago
Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.
On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that.
On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done).
Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people working hard? Not usually, because it mostly doesn't matter. Spreadsheets idle in inboxes, meetings lead nowhere and achieve nothing, brown-nosers and family members get promoted into jobs they're incompetent at. And the world continues to spin regardless.
Also, have you all tried making a non-swe career work lately? How about for 5+ years?
In the last two years I've worked with hundreds of bootcamp students who have reached the end of their rope with 20th century career paths that no longer make any f-ing sense. From teachers to construction workers to bartenders to graphic designers. Not all of them have a deep love for writing software, but all of them recognize that its one of the only viable paths available if you don't want to have roommates into your 40s.
As my best friend told me in an abandoned bay area parking lot before I switched careers to swe, there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living. Maybe it only applies to california, maybe it only applies to millennials, but having been on both sides of that fence now I 100% agree.
I saw this as well as someone who hired from "Bootcamps" graduates for a couple of years. The people that got into bootcamps came from all sorts of professions. Most of them had a Bachellor degree (this is in Mexico) and had already worked in their profession for some time.
There were people from Tourism, Law, (non-software) Engineering, Biologists, Chemists, Philosophy, among others.
Most of the people in those areas were burned out of REALLY being overworked, underpaid and being treated like trash (you should see how Law firms treat their interns).
> there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living
I suspect this may be exaggerated, in that there is still demand in other career paths, they just aren't as appealing for various reasons, e.g. manual/technical trades with reasonable pay but some physical labor involved or a long apprenticeship period
I do worry we might be flooding the field and siphoning talent from sectors that matter, even as the proportion of software jobs that don't really need to exist balloons
this seems like a recipe for a lot of disappointed people in need of retraining once we realize code can't eat the entire world, and in the meantime it feeds the bubble cycle, pointless or abusive "innovation", and speculative nonsense software is plagued by
We need data for this. More importantly, we need data for how tough it is to get certain jobs. That means stuff like:
* Time spent on finding a job
* Time spent on studying in order to attain a job
* Actual amount of hours worked (hard to get accurate data on it)
* Actual amount of effort per hour (hard to operationalize)
It's a very tough discussion to have, but I have a gut feeling that you're simplifying too much and are partially wrong. But I can't even give evidence that you might be wrong because I don't have data. So at best I feel we're both blind and we don't have a one-eyed king that can see! ;-)
SWE is easy as fuck for the amount of money it gives.
Compare that to physics, chemistry, bio or mechanical engineering.
When I see SWE saying they know 10 different languages I see someone who is bragging that they know how to sum 1+1 1+2 1+3 (...) 1+10
No wonder people with no degree can learn how to code in a few months and get a nice paying job. Try that with any of the others I mentioned and you get nothing. Not with 1 year. Not with 2 years. Maybe with 3 years of studying.
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We can get statistics for some of the parent's claims:
> On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true.
10.3% of US jobs are classified as "physically demanding". [1] (I didn't see parent said "labour" until after my research, but I expect figures in the UK are similar). Assertion is TRUE, the majority is not doing "grinding" labor.
> Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done).
Hard to say about the parenthetical, and it is impossible to say if the jobs don't need to be done without running an experiment, but some research has been done on whether people think their job needs to be done. A study of the European Work Commission Survey [2] showed that in 2005 only 7.8% of people responded that they were not doing useful work. In 2015 even fewer, 4.8% felt they where not doing useful work. (The UK reported slightly higher at 5.6%). A "recent poll" from an article dated 2017 which links to a 404 for the poll claims that poll said that 37% of Brits felt their jobs were useless. [3] Even the originator of the "bullshit jobs" book thought that 20 - 50%--maybe as high as 60%--were useless. Assertion is probably FALSE, most jobs have some utility.
> Most of us are just doing things for money.
Yes, and so what? Does that make it not worthwhile?
According to a Pew study from 2016, 49% of Americans are "very satisfied" with their job (59% of people whose family incomes were over $75k), and about half said they viewed their job as a career. 51% said their job gave them some sense of identity (higher percent as with more education), while 47% percent say the job is just what they do for a living. However, those working in non-profits, government, or self-employed were about 62% likely to say their job gives them a sense of identity, while only 44% of those working at a company said the same) Assertion is PROBABLY FALSE, depending on the definition of "most" and the intent of the claim, but the statistics certainly do not make it a definition-true assertion.
[1] https://dc.citybizlist.com/article/639055/dc-has-the-2nd-sma... (scroll to the bottom for the US figures)
[2] https://phys.org/news/2021-06-workers-useless-jobs-previousl...
[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/why-its-time-to-rethi...
[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a...
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Am I to assume you're not happy to trust ma gut?
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Or, you know, you could just listen to people.
Qualitative evidence is just fine. We might want to stop exclusively fetishizing numbers, and instead of complaining how hard it is to find data, do something to fix the problems right in front of our face.
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> Most other jobs are generic office jobs
I really don't think this is true. Maybe in the US, but worldwide I would charecterize most job environments as closer to sweatshop than office.
I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable.
I do understand the issue. Humans are prone to complain about any slight whether real or imagined. Millionaires will complain about not having enough money, A-list celebrities will complain about not having enough visibility, sports stars will complain about every foul play.
Money just does not lead to life satisfaction, only craving. I just have to accept that this is the human condition.
> I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable.
The compensation can be high if you work in Silicon Valley (even though the cost of living is high there). The standard corporate programming job is already paid much worse. Also in a lot of countries that are not the USA, software development is not such a well-paying job.
I don't think there is that many countries were software developers aren't reasonably well compensated compared to local standard of pay. And that is the level that we should really compare to. Is the pay above median or in top 25% for the location? I would guess that it is for most of the world.
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The average SWE in America is making $93,000. Average teacher is about $65,000, Average construction worker $38,000, average bartender $65,000, average hotel worker $45,000.
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> The standard corporate programming job is already paid much worse
Data for this? Does not match my experience whatsoever.
Compensation does not reduce the type of suffering software developers typically endure (or complain about).
Office politics, skills evaporating, high work pressure, ageism, boredom, physical inactivity, an indoor life, over-consumption of information...all of these factors have their effect on one's mental state as well as body.
Pay does not fix that.
> I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable.
This. People don't feel sorry for people who are in the top 20% in terms of salaries, when they complain about not being in the top 5%.
About a decade ago, or a bit more, I noticed that the the crowd over at slashdot started complaining in similar ways, either that some MBA was compensated better, or that H1B holders were suppressing salaries.
Maybe I'm prejudiced, but it seems to me that this kind of thinking is common in mediocre developers who are disappointed that they are stuck in an average-or-below paying programming job from around the age of 35-40 on. Maybe their salary even went down a bit, in real terms, after the latest downturn.
I simply have trouble empathizing with people who have it better than most other poeple, but still complain like that. If they were industrial workers that started out low (at least for the country), but still lost their job to outsourcing to Asia, and were unable to get another, I would empathize a bit more.
I don't think it's the job of governments to protect top 20% earners from competition from abroad, and get fed up when entitled people demand such protectionism.
I stopped following slashdot because the discussions often turned into something I would expect in a labor union forum, instead focusing on fresh perspectives in tech an science.
But if it is a generational sort of thing, I suppose that is why it is becoming more common on HN about now.
The thing that really crystallises how spoilt we are is: https://nohello.club/
We take ourselves so seriously we cannot afford the time for someone to be polite!
Even the website itself states this pretty much on top:
> Do still be polite, and feel free to have social conversations!
Given that, I don't really see what's impolite about it, especially in an async conversations, where the other person is not expected to be on their feet, waiting for incoming messages.
Don’t mix up engineer culture with being spolied. Engineers will find ways to trade social boilerplate for efficiency whether they get paid 500k or nothing at all.
> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history.
Nope this is an outdated opinion. You can do just as well or better in trades (source: my electrician buddy). If you’re referring to the FAANG salaries (sub 1%) you’re comparing to doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs in terms of opportunity cost. Your average joe programmer isn’t killing it like you seem to think, and they’d do just as well in trades or middle management.
The cynic in me thinks this is an opinion promoted by employers, just like the BS “labour shortage” headline.
Do you actually have data to back that up, or just one anecdote from a friend? Median pay for electricians is about $57k/year [1], and that's after 4 years of apprenticeship and passing the exam. That's compared to a median salary of over $100k for software devs [2]. Sure, you can make a lot of money as an electrician, HVAC person, welder, etc. if you own and run your own business, but your average tradesperson is not in that category, just like your average software developer isn't running their own dev shop.
[1] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician/salar...
[2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...
There's a huge difference in where plumbers vs. SWEs live, though. You have to compare the actual purchasing power. SWEs are more likely to be located in HCOL areas and therefore have higher salaries because SWEs need the infrastructure cities provide. Whereas there are plenty of plumbers who live in rural areas.
I have no idea how that comparison would shake out, or if the rise of WFH for tech people would/will change it, though.
Yeah, but in trades you have to climb in hot attics, deal with sewers, work outside, etc. And you have to put in a full days work. How many of us developers actually put in a full 8+ hours? I know that I don’t. I can usually get my assigned work done in about four hours. Can you imagine an electrician or plumber or doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day? It’s insane how much I get paid for what I actually do.
>doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day
I'm absolutely sure that lawyers and doctors only work 20 hours a week.
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We’ll my buddy does electrical for new builds and most of his time is spent waiting on other shit to get done. Not even joking, they want the electricians there just in case they can stick to schedule, but of course they can’t.
Also sitting in a chair in an office all day has a lot of health issues And they’re insidious in that your body doesn’t immediately tell you how badly your damaging it.
Don't forget starting your day at 5am, driving an hour and half to and from the job site, or living at a Holiday Inn for weeks at a time.
I know a few doctors working < 20 hours a week.
I don't have to imagine them because I see them while working for me or while talking to my friends who do the job. They go from coffee to coffee, work hard 6 hours for a day then take 2 days break, take 4 hour lunch breaks, say they are gonna come then come 2 days later, and many other stories. Now ALL of them hiked the prices 2x to 3x no matter the craft because of course THEIR material also "dramatically rose in price". Plumber, painter, glassworker, woodworker, electrician, you name it. Some things actually rose in price like steel or wood, but some rose only 20-30% and of course they double the price of work after the price of material "doubles".
Have you seen the way somebody who has been in the trades for 20 years walks? They have a very particular kind of gait. You can easily tell them apart from the weekend-warriors walking into Home Depot just by their stride. It's the walk of a body that's been absolutely wrecked by physical labor.
Man this is the truth.
They all have some combination of: odd posture, odd gait, a dry cough, or bad skin. You can talk about ageism in the Tech world, but I've worked as a tradesman for a bit of time when I was young, and there were not many past 50 much less 50 and healthy. Over lunch they each all recounted their health issues, which made me quit that summer and get an office job.
You can do just as well in the trades - if you are a master (whatever the top rank is) working 80 hours a week. Right now the trades are in high enough demand that you can get that overtime, but that will change and then you are back to hoping you can even get 40 hours. In the meantime working for a boring company is a 40 hour a week job with great pay. FAANG is much higher pay, but they are also more hours per week in general (or so I'm told).
Remember that a high-paid software developer is unlikely to have poor electrician friends, so by definition any of their friends are likely to make as much or more money.
The trades can be a good life, especially since you have much more freedom in where you can be located, but to pretend they average as high as FAANG is silly.
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The point is that the trades lile electrician or HVAC get paid well but ut is much harder physical work just had my AC replaced and the guy was sweating through rhe day to put everything together I paid well but it wasn't harder than making a SWE salary.
SWE is easy, can be fun, pays well, can be full remote, safe desk job. Usually other professions lack one or more of these.
This seems to be a perspective that's exclusively silicon valley (perhaps large parts of the US) based. Not at all true in Europe at the least. Not that it's a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but even low six figures is really rare in the EU for Software Development.
Easiest is also highly subjective, if your job is making wordpress templates/sites then sure. If you're working on complexer systems then this statement is horseshit. I've done physical and service jobs that were both easier than the software development I do, only difference was that the physical job was also physically exhausting.
My company has noticed that good developers in Germany are cheaper than in India. Good is key here, you can get bad developers in India for very cheap (this might be good enough). The highest paid software positions in Germany are non-union jobs and the majority are not willing to leave the union for more money, which means they are refusing to do the work of a senior engineer, and this in turn means we can't use the cheap labor for lack of leaders.
I remember reading Indians on r/DevOps who were surprised they were earning more than Germans in DevOps/Ops positions.
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> highest paid software positions in Germany are non-union jobs
How does one identify a well paying non-union employer? Noname companies in almost all cases pay much less than union employers.
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> Easiest is also highly subjective
Anecdotally, I've observed (over a 30-year career) that less than half of the people who have the qualifications can actually produce halfway decent code (as in code that doesn't crash the first time it's used or introduce new problems).
I’m from a small Australian city. I earn in the top 5% of the country with 8 years experience and no degree. And I see all my friends who picked software in the same situation.
It’s probably the most privileged position possible.
Maybe it's true in Australia.. however here in Germany e.g. your chance of being a top earner if you have no degree is near nil. Usually you are expected to have university degrees for tech jobs. There are also some without but it's the minority and their promotion prospects are a lot worse.
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I have to agree with GP. I know many developers in France/Germany at the Master level, and although their job is far from being the worst, their total compensation is rather in the top 30%. Not bad, but far from a 6-figures.
Same here. I'm from Poland, I've 6 YOE, no degree, and also top 5% of earners. No other job will let me achieve this in such short time. You can earn similar money as a doctor, lawyer or let's say plumber BUT ypu have to do at least one of: a) work 80 a week instead of 40 (and let's be honest, none of us work 8h a day). b) do hard physical work instead of sitting in a chair c) be responsible for people lifes (and face jail in case of failure) etc
In short: I'm privileged AF
Getting a paper is almost mandatory here due to the ease of getting one.
I suspect this was simply so obvious that OP didn't feel it was worth mentioning. If your goal is making a lot of money in software development, you'd be a fool to stay in Europe. You have to move to the US. That's where the money is.
There's absolutely zero point venting out frustration on fellow working class members when upper management and up are actively trying to reduce costs by cutting headcount and/or wages relative to profits.
This race to the bottom is how software devs will become the new "teacher shortage", and how wealth will continue to funnel to the upper classes with those on the lower end unable to climb up.
Yeah indeed. Coming from someone who had to work with physical labor before I started programming, software developers don't know how good they have it.
"The pay isn't great", "treated far too shabbily", "dealing with bugs and bad decisions", "inadequate processes" and so on, sucks when development is the only thing you've dealt with, but you have no idea how it is to actually have a blue collar job if you're actually complaining about those things.
I think cs137 and others like them should try to have a part-time job at McDonalds (or whatever that is not in front of a screen), because it will make you love your software engineering job again.
My first job was fast food too. Except for the pay, the grease, the unpredictable and strict hours, and the cleaning of bathrooms, I'd love to take a job like that up again.
There's stress, but it ends at the end of the breakfast/lunch/dinner rush, not a constant low-grade stress over the whole day and often lingering into the night from unfinished JIRA tickets.
Then there's mostly chatting and hanging out with interesting people, either kids with dreams or adults with off-the-beaten-path lives (not an endless stream of white collar adults who only have stories about how they went to a bbq or just had another kid) while cleaning or prepping food, helping a customer here and there. Some customers were assholes but they'd be gone a few minutes later and you'd go back to other things. And because it's a public facility sometimes my friends would stop by just to say hi and shoot the shit for a few minutes.
And I was much healthier then too, despite working fast food. Mainly because I spent my day moving instead of being stuck in a chair.
I also worked a retail, a warehouse, and a factory job. The retail job was even better because you didn't have to deal with the grease or cleaning bathrooms, and the customers were somewhat nicer. If it paid remotely near what I make now I'd probably switch to that tomorrow.
Factory job was probably the toughest. More isolating, no A/C in the summer, more constant stress, more physically demanding, mandatory 10 hour days for weeks sometimes, and there was an incident where a drunk forklift driver almost knocked a tower of heavy steel racks on top of me. I quit the next week.
Any white collar job looks better than McDonalds. It’s a ridiculous comparison.
I could say McDonalds workers don’t know how easy they have it. They should try picking fruit as a seasonal immigrant, because it will make them love working at McDonalds.
> picking fruit as a seasonal immigrant
And those seasonal immigrant fruit pickers don't know how easy the have it. They should try being kidnapping victims chained in a basement, waiting to be tortured to death by an axe-wielding maniac.
That's the problem with "you can't complain, somebody else has it worse" - I can always think of somebody who has it worse.
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> Any white collar job looks better than McDonalds. It’s a ridiculous comparison.
I've had a colleague who was paid worse as a software engineer than his previous job as a McDonald's burger flipper. I also have software engineer friends who were paid minimum wage as software engineers.
I learned from that that having a high-value skill means nothing if you're not willing to take action to extract that value.
> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history.
I joked with a girl yesterday when she asked me what I did. I told her: "I'm a dude that's paid way to much to sit in his living room and make websites and apps".
Not everyone will make $300k per year, but you'll probably still make way more than most other professions. Teachers make like $70k in good places, often times much less. Here we are sitting in our pajamas at home changing the background color of a button and making twice as much.
So many things I have to disagree with. Not all software engineering is easy, particularly the highly paid variety. The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock. Companies then expect senior engineers to mentor other engineers and give presentations of their technical challenges, debasing the value of the knowledge gained working off the clock. Manual labor jobs don’t typically require the student loans software engineers have to pay off, further offsetting the salary gains by years. Manual labor workers get to go home and be done at the end of the day and aren’t tacitly expected to be available at all hours. It may not be the worst industry but it definitely is not a fun industry to work in at a lot of companies. It has one of the worst interview cultures on earth probably and the more years I work the more I see the obvious flaws to the point where I want to leave.
>The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock
You don't need to do this forever. Usually you can just focus on a stack and related technologies and do well. Once you have experience and a clearly defined need, ad-hoc research is good enough.
> You don't need to do this forever
The thesis of the linked article is that you do. For the most part, it matches my experience. I'm 30 years in and already wondering how useful the Hadoop/Spark/Scala stuff I spent the last few years mastering is going to be in the next 5 years.
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You dont have to "learn it for the job" you have to learn it for your next interview where you need to have that trendy tech on your resume.
A lot to disagree with here, but off the bat, many of the highest paid software engineers are the ones working the very least or not at all.
The more experience I have, the more I get paid for consultation on the basis of my experience. I understand how that works.
Well, I think the parent is comparing software engineering to other white collar professions like lawyer.
In my opinion comparing SWE to blue collar work like construction is apples to oranges. Ofc the blue collar work is harder and more demanding physically.
It’s better to think about whether software engineers are being compensated fairly relative to other professions like lawyers.
I think they are given that wages seem to be governed with supply and demand. On one hand I don’t make as much as my sister, who is a doctor. On the other hand, I make enough/comfortable money and don’t have to deal with the liability/responsibilities/obligations of being a doctor or lawyer, and I can work from bed naked should I choose to do so.
You also don’t need to spend years in a very expensive education with tall entry barriers and taking on massive debt. But also, you had the info in doctor fakeries available and still chose software.
I mean - this is YMMV. Typical SV FAANG engineer is from an Ivy League or adjacent competitive school. Often with a masters.
So, yes, you might not have to do the full specialty training and residency but it can still be quite competitive and expensive.
You’re only earning surgeon money when you’ve made staff level at FAANG. Which usually means you’re near the same age as surgeons and there was a lot of risk and grind getting there. If anyone thinks getting to staff at FAANG is trivial - I’d suggest they’ve been very lucky in life and aren’t a representative person of how hard it is.
People who could do either often go into software because of the nearly unlimited earnings cap. Theoretically you could start your own company and be ultra rich. That’s what I see often as the source. Less common with doctors afaict.
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I think you meant doctor salaries?
> work from bed naked
Can confirm. Just did an onboarding in my underwear. (Although mostly because I forgot time conversion when on business travel was a thing, because COVID)
Or even more so compared to other office workers like managers and such. Or marketing, accounting and so on. All in all it is not too bad.
Hmm what makes you think software developers are not abused? Maybe in your world they are not, but it regular to hear about devs working 12-14 hours a day. With bosses and clients harassing them even at off hours.
You hear about that in "high status" organizations. Most companies cannot get away with that, and treat their developers much better.
This has not been true in my experience. The shitty small business masquerading as a startup treated me horribly, now I work for OVH and everyone is super nice.
Amazon's AWS is known for long hard sink or swim overtime, and they're the first letter in FAANG
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No one talked about service workers. These peoples are exponentially more fcked than any of us can ever be. There is still a too large gap between employee and CEO / founder compensation in our buisiness, despite six figure salaries and yes, it is worth complaining about and fighting for.
I think sales is a much better gig than software engineering, personally.
Any engineer who has enough EQ and people skills to give some demos on Zoom is going to find that Sales Engineering/Solutions Engineering is an easier job with more earning potential, all with no on-call rotation.
On top of that, the company treats you like you're valuable rather than a cost center (especially relevant to people doing infrastructure and IT engineering). Sales teams go on vacation to team-build, engineers are shoved in a conference room with some lukewarm sandwiches.
> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history
In US for sure. But there are many other places where you get a better balance between learning/working/salary in other jobs.
Not to mention the notoriously higher rate of burnout in the industry, even in the US.
The people in this threads making huge overgeneralizations might be indeed overpaid.
Your comment already has a lot of responses but one thing I didn't see mentioned is about the tough physical labor. It is often neglected that working at the computer is really bad for your body. Sitting for hours is unhealthy and creates all kinds of problems: obesity, disc prolapse, bad circulation, so much more. Also your eyes suffer a lot and become worse much faster than in most other jobs.
I agree that being a SWE is certainly not the worst thing in the world but it has also a lot of bad properties that often are overlooked and the most positions do not have moon salaries, that we see on HN regularly.
Also to do whatever lower income job you don't need to study for 5+ years (master). You need to compare with jobs that have similar requirements to your education.
You do not need a 5+ year degree. I have no formal qualifications and have no issue securing six figure jobs. And I have seen many others do the same.
You also have the ability to get a standing desk and take breaks to walk around.
Yea so maybe that degree thing is a German problem. I do not know the other markets/countries. Here, what I said is certainly true.
A standing desk is better than no standing desk but won't correct everything by itself. Taking a break and walking around is fine but I still need to get back to staring into the computer screen to do my work.
I don't know your age but for me it started with about ~35 that I realized that this has negative effects on my body.
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lol yes this is a good point. We should all volunteer in a hospital or police department for a few days to get some perspective... And another thought: many jobs descriptions list any technical novelty under the sun even though only some small project in some small team somewhere in the company uses it. Why? To look more appealing to job seekers. It's much cooler to describe the job as PHP + Elixir + Kafka + Big data than simply PHP - which is mostly what the job is about.
I'm not denying the field is changing fast, it is. But there's other reasons why 50 year olds are pushed away besides some imagined inability to keep up.
In comparison to the majoritiy of the population it truly is a nice job, though if you ain't working at FAANG your pay can be lower compared to e.g. a mechanical engineer
Username checks out. I laughed so hard and I recognize myself in the description. Just an awesome comment.
What they expressed is not contrary to what you express. They said the expected salary conditioned on intelligence for SWE is lower to that of other jobs, and I am inclined to agree. If you include game dev jobs in SWE then it goes even lower.
Agreed. Software devs have had it easy for a long time. I hope that doesn't go away but it is true!
Oh yeah, every dev in the world makes $100 000 minimum per year, sure. And it's boring and easy with reasonable deadlines and appropriate vacations and time off work.
Even if you make something like $20000 per year, you have it better than most in the world. People spend their body (the one we only have one of) doing way more intense (and vital for the world) labor than software engineers do, and earn much less.
If you think unreasonable deadlines are a big issue, then you're in for a rough awakening if you spend any time with the rest of the workforce that doesn't sit in front of a computer all day.
Let me sum up your entire argument.
Most of the world lives in severe poverty, therefor software developers should accept any amount that the owner class feel like paying them and be thankful.