All the data suggests this is wrong by any order of magnitude. The web was an absolute game changer.
In the fact that it made rank-and-file CRUD harder. The web's state-less-ness and screwy anti-wysiwyg UI "auto-flow" made CRUD into a convoluted whack-a-mole mess even its mother hates. It takes about 3x as long and 3x more code to develop a CRUD app in web now. We have to focus on tech & UI minutia instead of the domain. We de-evolved and nobody seems to care. The Jetsons were shot in head point blank, replaced with the Flinstone DOM.
The web may be is a godsend for e-commerce and social networks, but it sucks rotting eggs for office CRUD: the wrong tool for the job.
1. Being X is not a good long-term option, unless you like the job. 2. Not sure where you base you viewpoint, but I have a hard time finding a more competitive and global job market that favours candidates. 3. All high paying jobs demand much. Otherwise they wouldn't be high-paying.
The average developer writes and maintains custom software for large organizations. While that kind of secretarial work is useful and necessary, it's not particularly valuable and doesn't pay that well.
For example, drinking water is incredibly important. Without it, we would die in a matter of days. However, you can't create much value by producing clean drinking water (branding it is another story), because people are not willing to pay that much for it under normal circumstances. As long as people can reasonably assume that someone will produce drinking water anyway, its value remains low.
In the same way, many jobs are essential but don't produce much value under normal circumstances. There is usually another person or another company willing to provide the same good or service.
Truth is, it's the top 20% that creates the most value.
What pay is though? I make significantly less than numbers discussed in tech-centric places, but I still make more than I could doing anything else given my age/education.