Coding is basically the one tradeskill where the free market is still working reasonably well. Apple or Google can turn a $500k total compensation package for

Coding is basically the one tradeskill where the free market is still working reasonably well. Apple or Google can turn a $500k total compensation package for an employee into $2M/year or more in revenue, so they'll keep snapping up people and dragging wages up. Facebook doesn't even bring people on to a specific team, they know that coders are so valuable that they'll hire as many as they can and just find things for them to do. Even at the low end, six months of tooling work from a $100k coder can often put a handful of $50k/year white collar employees permanently out of work (or make them twice as productive as before). If one company doesn't realize that, another eventually will. It's not too tough to pull in ~50-100k/year running a SaaS business or freelancing Things in the USA are really broken in the retail sector. Companies pay the absolute bare minimum that will keep them in business, and make up for a lot of the terrible morale issues that come along with that using Orwellian management systems