[maximente]

why does it bother you? you're thinking like some individual laborer in a weirdly abstract sense, not like the person paying them. hint: you aren't paid based on your worth, you're paid based on, in general, the lowest that your employer can afford to pay you to not leave for a competitor.

capital on the aggregate always tries to get labor to work for the lowest possible price that they can. that's why negotiations go on between workers and employers. that's why if you don't negotiate, you get bowled over.

software engineers seem to think that they are this ultra elite labor class whose "value" is somehow tied completely to their intrinsic skills. that all goes out the window when software engineers begrudgingly accept massive pay cuts to take their insanely comfortable salary and lifestyle to a low COL area. that ought to tell you everything you need to know about your intrinsic "value": you lose immense power when you don't live in a place where you can quickly and easily get a job with a competitor.

if software engineers learn anything from this, it's that they are being paid a premium to essentially not change companies.