All my finance friends make about 10x what my engineer friends make and work equally hard. If you compare engineers to lawyers, doctors, and executives we are very much underpaid.
That doesn't mean that you should feel so inherently entitled to the compensation that you do get. While some executive may be making 10x your salary, you're probably making 10x the salary of someone else who works just as hard as you do.
If I were to say there is unfairness in the matter, it would be because not all activities are valued the same. There are obvious reasons for that which I don't contest, but the distribution of interests across different people is more or less random and pays no attention to whether those interests will lead to high-value skills or not.
I view myself as lucky to have an innate interest in something which makes me financially valuable to at least some companies. Some of my friends or family members don't have interests which tend to lead to high-value skills. As a result, for them to get a similarly paying job, they'd have to choose a career in something they don't enjoy.
I don't believe anyone is acting overly entitled for wanting to get the best compensation they can convince a company to pay them. Maybe I misread the original article, but I got the sense from the author's tone that he feels entitled to much more than simply being paid his worth, though. He just doesn't appear to be even remotely grateful for any of the fortunes he has to even have the option of turning down companies all over high-paying jobs which he enjoys greatly.
I suppose this is a case where words speak louder than actions. His actions--maximizing his expected compensation--are perfectly fine in my book. But his words betray a deeper level of entitlement which I don't think is justified. Just my two cents.
You're right: $1m/year is very rare overall even for the world of finance. And I assure you someone with that salary on Wall Street is working 80 hours a week at minimum and has been for quite some time.
The average engineer will have far less (or no) debt and will only need a BA/BS.