The value of an engineer depends on the business. When software engineers are scarce, their compensation increases until the market has priced out sufficiently

The value of an engineer depends on the business. When software engineers are scarce, their compensation increases until the market has priced out sufficiently many potential employers. Those employers will then decide that they are better off not hiring a (good) software engineer than hiring one at the market rate, because the engineer does not create enough value to justify their cost.