Yeah, one of the most shocking things I learned as an adult is that work is inversely proportional to salary. It's obvious in hindsight but it's hard to deprogram the lies you were told constantly growing up. Jobs with shit pay are offered by employers who are price sensitive and who are trying to squeeze every little bit of effort out of each dollar.
Take that not even $15/hr line cook and compare it to your software dev hourly and ask yourself are you working 5x harder than they are? Oh fuck no, I'm working less hard most weeks.
"In theory" the equation is something like [time+energy spent] * [value for work not being doable without specialized knowledge/experience] * [demand for the work], with the goal being to maximize the second and third to absurd values, so you can decrease the amount of actual energy you expend.
Take that not even $15/hr line cook and compare it to your software dev hourly and ask yourself are you working 5x harder than they are? Oh fuck no, I'm working less hard most weeks.