I think what is happening is that people in general, not only software engineers, are getting paid much more and sometimes less because of increasing impact due

I think what is happening is that people in general, not only software engineers, are getting paid much more and sometimes less because of increasing impact due to tech/globalization scaling and winner takes all network effects. Look at how much some YouTubers make. Due to the Internet, they can reach far more people than before and make far more money. Also, their popularity begat more popularity without commensurate additional work on their part. The same is happening to tech companies. You have that same power law with a few at the top making a lot of the money. It applies to YouTubers, tech companies, software engineers at those tech companies, etc... The rise of tech billionaires is another manifestation of this. Of course this is creating a lot of pushback from other parts of society that are sometimes actually losing influence, money, etc... since there is a negative feedback loop on the other side.