A good question to ask might be why salaries should go up significantly. We're lucky enough to work in a very well compensated industry but we're also in a kind

A good question to ask might be why salaries should go up significantly. We're lucky enough to work in a very well compensated industry but we're also in a kind of bubble where sometimes the economics are strange. In the good times when VCs are falling over themselves to fund anything that might be the next FAANG there is a huge amount of money pouring into the industry and a lot of hiring going on and none of that is necessarily tied to getting good results. Businesses can survive for years while hiring lots of people for crazy money without ever making a profit. The VCs can still do very well because every now and then they do back a unicorn but on an individual company basis this disconnect between how much money they have and how much money they make is not "normal" and severely distorts the employment market. It's unrealistic to expect the magic money tree to continue growing gold leaves in the economic bad times. Big tech firms aren't immune to a downturn and we'll see hiring slowing down in the places where it was artificially boosted before and compensation falling with it. That will partly be because compensation that is based on stock is probably going to take a big hit at a lot of companies. With this in mind it wouldn't be entirely surprising if salaries today were similar to those 15 years ago. In the meantime there might have been rapid growth in some years but we've also had two multi-year black swan events. Time will tell whether the ups and downs have cancelled each other out in this case but I don't think that would be a big surprise.