> What makes me nervous, though, is that we don't really understand why programmers are paid this well It's very easy. Look at any tech company's stock price

> What makes me nervous, though, is that we don't really understand why programmers are paid this well It's very easy. Look at any tech company's stock price and you have a very good proxy for programmer compensation. When government and central banks worked together to create a bubble in the monetary base, valuations went nuts and so did job creation. Many of these jobs are useless or unnecessary. Many of them are completely discretionary. Many of them have a negative effect on the bottom line. Many of them employ people who we would normally consider unemployable. Many of them offer the employer atrocious returns. In classic government fashion, they realized they made a mess, so now they are doing their best to correct this by pulling on every lever they have: * Wage suppression through record immigration * Under-representing inflation so that CPI-driven wage adjustments do not rise enough to sustain demand * Outright job destruction by trying to destroy certain key industries (e.g. oil and gas) * Making money very much not free, so companies suddenly have to think about costs. Unfortunately this trend has only begun and technology has been generally fast to act, but mass layoffs are coming to almost every industry, especially if you were not characterized as "essential" during the pandemic. Inflation isn't just fought through interest rate increases and quantitive tightening, it's fought by ensuring you can no longer afford your current quality of life.