I focus on myself. Am I better than I was yesterday? Three years ago? Good. Keep going.
We're not like doctors. There is no capital-P professional guild setting the bar for practitioners of software engineering. There are engineering guilds that recognize software development as a discipline that will accredit you if you meet their requirements and pay their dues. However it's often not mandatory for you to be accredited in order to practice software engineering. And it's not required that a company developing software employ a professional software engineer in order to conduct business. So hardly anyone seeks out accreditation.
In a free market you get companies like Google that need a large volume of people trained with vocational skills to churn out code in the various frameworks and tools. Doesn't bother me any.
I like to work on problems that are interesting and make the world a better place. You can't always do that at a Google or Netflix.
At my present day job I make software for factories. My team and I make people's jobs safer, keep machines running longer, and have improved food/drug manufacturing safety operations.
On my evenings and weekends, when I'm not unwinding, I'm presently working on Haskell libraries for type-directed data migrations, extending the community fork of Lean to add FFI support, and working on a course in abstract algebra.
Making the world a better place is pretty easy and can start with small things. I like visiting some of our customer factories and meeting the people who use our software. It makes my day to hear their feedback and know that it's making a difference for them.
I mean - honestly - most people that work in computers don't work for FAANG, or even a FAANG adjacent corporation. I like job stability (and with my health issues, job stability and good health benefits are always at the top of my priority list), so most of FAANG (and many start-ups) are lower on my priority list; I know I could almost double my income moving out of higher ed. but that comes with different costs and benefits.
You're treating this like monetary value is the only motivator for people. Let's pick on medicine; a general practitioner consistently makes less money, but they tend to have greater, more regular contact with their patients, which may be a strong motivator for them over becoming a surgeon for more money. And to boot, the surgeon is more specialized, so they have simultaneously learned less than the Gen Practitioner, but more specificity within their selected specialization. This is similar to boot camps, that provide a very narrow skillset that give someone the best chance of getting hired into that very narrow position type; where as, someone like the OP and I are happy with our broader knowledge that gives us different benefits.
And probably most importantly, what do I care that someone else has optimized their job path for monetary gain. I could assign 5 minute increments to worrying about each person and still not make it through all the idiots that are employed in the tech industry in my lifetime.
I'm not the OP but generally I don't attach that much importance to my job. I'm very lucky to (both now and historically) have great colleagues working on interesting problems.
But in terms of 'jealousy' for those who earn more? Quite the opposite. There are plenty of companies I'd rather top myself than work for.
We're not like doctors. There is no capital-P professional guild setting the bar for practitioners of software engineering. There are engineering guilds that recognize software development as a discipline that will accredit you if you meet their requirements and pay their dues. However it's often not mandatory for you to be accredited in order to practice software engineering. And it's not required that a company developing software employ a professional software engineer in order to conduct business. So hardly anyone seeks out accreditation.
In a free market you get companies like Google that need a large volume of people trained with vocational skills to churn out code in the various frameworks and tools. Doesn't bother me any.
I like to work on problems that are interesting and make the world a better place. You can't always do that at a Google or Netflix.