7 Jobs Companies Are Desperate to Fill (#2: software engineering)

That is a no brainier. The dot com bust bitterer a whole generation and out of the pool that remains probably 10% are truly talented enough to build something more robust than a desktop app.

So there is a huge fight for that 10% and their always will be until the system of rewards changes.

$85k on average is not worth it to anyone who is talented. If I had to do it again now I would not do it (i would go into bio-eng or something).

Fortunately I passed the cusp of working a "job" and survived the .com bust and sold a start-up, now I freelance but the idea of a dev "job" with all it's lack of freedom is a reprehensible though indeed.