Can anecdotally attest to this, working at Microsoft is slowly becoming more sought after than Google amongst me and my peers (a few of which work at Google with me).
Not to mention imagining having to write design docs in web based Microsoft Word.
Maybe Microsoft is the un-inflated wage expectancy.
I've progressively through my career felt more ashamed of earning so much money for the comparable little societal benefit I generate. Surely, I work on products that hundreds of millions of people use daily, they even enjoy it, but I don't think the beneficial impact of my work to society is anywhere close to what teachers, nurses, doctors, and so on provide. At some points the impact of my work on society was probably a net negative, I just generated cash for the company in detriment of society's needs.
I just can create millions and millions of US$ for a company through my labour. And for that we are well paid. I know, I've just described capitalism but some folks probably need to be more aware of it.
Perhaps it is because the value created is done by large teams of specialized people who cannot individually attribute the revolution to their work directly. Perhaps it is that the value created is power law distributed and only certain individuals in our field produce the majority of value created thus the rest legitimately believe what you described.
That is the case with chip designers and mechanical engineers as well but software engineers are paid significantly more than those other professions.
Which until recently, was relatively unshaken.
As an employer, MS also has tended to be much more understanding of personal circumstances and the likes - I know people there who took long career breaks, or had mental issues/breakdowns (sometimes quite public) that would elsewhere have been a resume generating event.
Locally Apple are also regarded as an extremely stable employer, especially at the lower levels (support, etc).
I've friends working fucking customer support jobs at apple because its stable and comfortable, when they could be making twice as much elsewhere given their skills.
I considered taking such a job a couple of years ago, after becoming thoroughly burned out of consulting/contracting and wanting some stability.
Funny thing about Apple though is the IP clauses in their contracts.
Even the guys working phone support for customers have to go through a whole paperwork process if they want to publish code they wrote in their own time online, just to ensure there's no Apple IP in it.