[ivanovm]

The tech industry unfortunately screwed up a basic social contract

It is well-understood in every other industry - if you want to be at a prestigious firm, make top compensation, sit in a nice office, work with top-tier coworkers and enjoy excellent perks, you must hustle hard and be unreasonably competitive every day to continue reaping those benefits.

I'm not even talking about back-breaking work - this is true for law, medicine, financial services, entertainment, sports, academia, and everything else I can think of.

After a decade+ run of cheap money and strong demand for talent, returning to broader reality may feel very unfair for many. But that doesn't make it so

[maerF0x0]

I think what you're saying is coming for tech. It's just that we've been short 100s of thousands of engineers for so many decades. But both the training (education, hack schools etc) side is closing the gap, plus tooling is amplifying existing engineers such that the gap between supply and demand is closing.

There will be a reckoning when supply exceeds demand, and then talent and competition will reign supreme.

That being said there already is about a 10x spread between talent pay in tech (roughly $100k to $1M)