I find this somewhat widespread lazy, defeatist attitude among engineers both sad and disturbing. It shows quite a lack of empathy and perspective.
In general, software workers are in an extremely fortunate position:
Their services are in high demand and this will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. Even when taking AI into account software creation will probably be among the very last jobs to be automated.
Software workers can create value out of thin air. Founding a business in the software industry is ridiculously easy. In almost any other industry high up-front investment is required. If you fail in any other industry you likely have to pay off a huge amount of debt. In the software industry the default worst case scenario is you've learned something along the way and just start over.
The idea that one can't found a business if one doesn't score in the VC lottery just seems like the feeling of being entitled to having everything handed to you for free. Not every software company has to be a unique snowflake. Not every software company has to be Facebook or Google. There's plenty of exciting software work to be done by bootstrapped software companies in down-to-earth industries (which are often often terribly underserved by the software development community at large).
This feeling of entitlement in my opinion is the root cause of the problem. As a software developer you can't expect business people to respect you and provide you with business leverage if all you want to do is sit at a desk all day and write code.
Communication is key. You need to present your work in terms non-developers can both understand and relate to, i.e. talk about the business value you provide.
If you don't want to be commoditised first of all don't commoditise yourself! You're not a bunch of TLAs. I find it offensive that people are commonly hired based on a set of acronyms as well as that people often identify with these acronyms. If you're a Java / PHP / JavaScript / whatever developer you're essentially a fungible commodity. If you present yourself as a skillful business problem solver that's an entirely different matter and more business-minded, less tech-savvy people will much more readily pay you the respect you deserve.