Not necessarily true! I've found that as TC has gone up the level of respect for workers has gone up as well. When companies don't pay well they generally treat workers poorly. Now of course, some mission-based companies are an exception to this!

My most stressful job was my first, and it required a lot of late nights of crunch time and writing proposals which I hated. Now at a big tech company, I am making 3-5x more than before, more opportunities to lead projects, more respect from management, and more interesting and impactful work.

Not necessarily, the total comp is mostly because those companies are overflowing with money so they can afford it. And they're competing with other companies overflowing with money.

There are not enough developers, and especially senior developers with experience in other FAANG (the skillset is different from your regular service IT company).