[bayesian_horse]

Compensation has nothing to do with "shortage of engineers". Engineers have to come from somewhere, and the only way higher compensation can bring more engineers is by competing with other industries or regions.

It's not like engineers prefer living on social welfare to an underpaid engineering job.

[ryandrake]

I'll address this one, see also vostok's comment below. I know plenty of former engineers and other super-smart technical people who wrote software for years but left because they hit the salary ceiling. They would go BACK to software engineering in a heartbeat if there was a compensation trajectory that matched their current jobs.