From my own experience of comparing my salary to those of friends in this industry, a lot of the discrepancy I see is largely based on very poor negotiation ski

From my own experience of comparing my salary to those of friends in this industry, a lot of the discrepancy I see is largely based on very poor negotiation skills. In my case, my dad taught me how to negotiate salary on my first real job the way some guys dad's teach them how to box. I'm horrible in a fight but have proven to be a fairly good negotiator. And I can understand why people compare software engineers to doctors and attorneys: Cases of highly trained "knowledge workers". But one big difference is that doctors are most often hired by other doctors. And lawyers are most often hired by other lawyers. Most engineers are hired as support-staff in an unrelated field. The ones that do work for software companies and startups are usually paid more. These are all just a few correlated data points but I think there's something to it.