I follow the argument, but one can't even make that statement with those numbers about most places SWEs work.

So if we take a company like Google where we could plausibly say "the average top salary for a SWE is $500,000/yr," already it is possibly more remunerative than most places an SWE would work. We could assume it was stated in extremely bad faith, that only 0.5% of the SWEs there make that and everyone else makes $75k. Or we could assume there is a ladder, a progression, and a path to get there. I don't believe the extremely bad faith representation would work here because of likely PR blowback. QED there is likely a path for a delivery driver to earn six figures at UPS.

> a representation of the gains of a typical worker who is subject to the deal

This is covered elsewhere in TFA, and is dependent on the kind of employee.