Agree completely. I have multiple friends in the SoCal and OC area that have gotten "boring" software engineering jobs in the last 12 months at decent salaries

Agree completely. I have multiple friends in the SoCal and OC area that have gotten "boring" software engineering jobs in the last 12 months at decent salaries but not astronomical (one as low as $95K, most in the 100-130 range, a few around 150). These include jobs such as: creating middleware for trucking parts suppliers to efficiently distribute between repair shops in Arizona; writing billing inhouse software for a large law firm; writing very tiny AI recommendation services for a lumber company to generate new sales leads. This is all anecdotal of course, but it's 8 people, and all 8 have non-sexy jobs. Nothing at a party that you would go "oh coooool". But they are gainfully employed.