Someone once told me that programmers should not complain about their "already high wages", because they have it good. They're well paid, have benefits, and the

Someone once told me that programmers should not complain about their "already high wages", because they have it good. They're well paid, have benefits, and they sit at an air conditioned desk. While I don't disagree with that statement, it's always bugged me because in the bigger picture I feel like this is not true, and especially the part where devs should not be able to raise grievances due to the claim their wages are high. If you look at it from the business perspective, devs are part of company that built the product, which they then go to market and make profits from. Profits that can be in the hundreds of millions. Why shouldn't the devs and the other workers (both engineers and the other company employees that helped make the profit happen), be paid well for it? And in certain companies where profits are in the billions, shouldn't those employees be making a lot more then? A lot more than what they're making now, that is, which means devs are not so well paid relative to the profit margin. The same goes for any profession too, waiter and line cooks at restaurants should be making more; their work directly contributed to the restaurant's profits, and should be better compensated than they are now, instead of this 12$/hr across the board without regard to profits. If you look at it from the economic perspective, we can go with the claim that programmers usually make more than the average job, sure. But 'so well paid' is kinda relative at that point. We're 'so well paid' relative to professions that are not so well paid, and keep in mind that the other professions have been around a lot longer than software (ie waiters). Wages themselves have not really increased on its own for the working class over the years, a lot of it has been artificially forced in the form of minimum wage by LAW. So if everyone else is making terrible money, and we as devs are considered to be 'so well paid', then maybe we aren't really 'so well paid'? Basically the other professions are artificially being kept lowly paid, so in comparison of course we make a lot. But if we factor in appropriate wage gains over the years for them, devs should be making a lot more than what we have now. Haven't thought of it much more than that, but the thought always comes when someone mentions that devs make a lot. Anyone else have these kind of thoughts?