I understand that it feels uneasy, even guilty, to be paid more compared to those outside of software engineering, or even to swe peers who are in different specializations or at different organizations. But that is an individualistic response to a systemic phenomenon. The tech industry
as a whole is overpaid, not just its workers. It’s the greatest beneficiary of the near-zero percent interest rates since the Great Recession, which incentivized capital to chase ever-greater yields, funneling massive amounts of money into tech, creating jobs and raising salaries. Not to mention, tech is a massive lever (software eating the world) that leads to greater business cost savings and higher margins, driving up demand for tech workers, and their salaries.
You cannot reverse that trend by simply choosing not to participate in getting paid more. By all means, don’t be motivated in your career solely for higher compensation. But also don’t feel bad for getting paid more. The money you leave on the table will just get taken by some other overpaid engineer, manager, or VC shaving pennies off of their costs anyway. Take the money for the sake of your loved ones, donate it, pay higher taxes if you want to. There’s nothing inherently unethical about it.
I would hazard to say, the more problematic situation about the ease of job-hopping in this industry is that it deprioritizes grit and perseverance. There’s always a better-managed organization, more feasible business model, higher quality engineering team for one to jump to when the going gets rough. That’s just as important as the promise of higher pay and title- why bother toiling if there’s always a slightly less dysfunctional org on the other side? So you end up with very transitory, evanescent companies because personnel keep disappearing every couple years.
But, I’m not sure if that’s really on the individual contributor to solve either. The question of retention and of building employee loyalty is really the responsibility of management. And with all of the dumb money that’s flowed into the tech industry thanks to interest rates and software being the primer economic lever of the times, companies have less incentive to make necessary changes. They themselves benefit from a very fluid workforce. If you job hop away your boss will just swap in someone who job hopped from another company. So maybe that’s just how it’s going to be until the next recession hits.