In the dotcom boom in Canada there was a sub-boom in fiber optics and related stuff in the Ottawa area. Nortel et al were hiring and paying big salaries right out of school, and people got used to it and thought that was how much money they could earn.

For years afterward there were people who had mentally anchored themselves at a certain salary bracket that couldn't find anything (especially in Ottawa) that paid anywhere close.

I always assumed this will happen any time with machine learning, I don't think it will be as bad for software overall though.