> 1. High total compensation (not salaries) is limited to FAANG/Unicorn employees (awash with money)
Very nearly every publicly-traded tech company, actually. The list of "tech" companies where mid-level engineers aren't breaking 200k TC is much shorter than the opposite.
> 2. That high compensation has been achieved by stock options multiplying in value, thanks to abnormal run of the stock market (thank you Federal Reserve), which is not going to continue with rising interest rates
Initial offers have been increasing; we aren't talking about golden handcuffs that employees have from stock growth. To give a very recent example: Amazon recently bumped up their pay-band for mid-level engineers and they seem to be hitting 350k/year (maybe more; have seen a couple reports of 400k). Their mid-level pay-band previously topped out at ~300k/year.
> 3. Salary base seems to be stuck at $150K for mid-senior developers in bigger cities (except for NYC) for many years now
...you mean "except the Bay Area", right? Though it's definitely not true either way; I live in a large city that isn't in the Bay, Seattle, or NYC, and 180k is a pretty common number for senior engineer base salaries, and I see 200k+ more and more frequently. (Not that I care too much about just base; given the choice why would I work for a company that only pays base salary, i.e. ~half of what other companies pay?)