[ghaff]

>There is such a taboo around pay cuts

Yes. But much less so about reduced bonuses, RSU grants (and esp. stock appreciation), and not matching inflation. At a lot of tech sector companies among others, you're already seeing pretty large effective comp decreases.

It's also the case that, as people often observe, large comp increases often come from switching jobs and that's probably going to be more difficult in general for the next few years.

ADDED: And one of the escape valves for people at smaller companies especially over the last year or two has been to try to get a job at Big Tech. (This doesn't only apply to developers.) Increasingly this looks to be a much tougher option.