This is not just a problem with the tech industry. In society in general there is only a weak correlation between skill and reward in lots of places and the var

This is not just a problem with the tech industry. In society in general there is only a weak correlation between skill and reward in lots of places and the variance in outcomes is very high and is dominated by factors like the socioeconomic background of your parents, race, gender etc that you don’t control. However since you don’t control those factors you are better off improving your skill, which you do control. Maybe later you will be put in a position of importance where you can make optimal decisions that end up widening the funnel and reduce the importance of those things by hiring and promoting the best people for the job and caring about good dev practise. I’m not buying your idea that 10/15 years ago the industry knew what it was doing and cared about quality though. I’ve been a professional software engineer for 25 years now and software quality as a whole has always been dire. There definitely is a minority of folks who care about it as there always has been so gravitate towards them.