It isn't even close to being solved in Silicon Valley, for a variety of reasons, mainly due to the culture within the industry. My opinion is that there are two

It isn't even close to being solved in Silicon Valley, for a variety of reasons, mainly due to the culture within the industry. My opinion is that there are two strains of cultural thought in this industry that allow developer wages to be kept relatively low compared with the revenues and margins of the companies they work for: 1) the rather Galt-like (and empirically unjustfiable) thought that development work is a meritocracy; 2) the strong line of thinking that prioritizes "enjoying my work" over "selling my very life in the form of time" coupled with the frequent (mistaken, in my opinion[0]) belief that the work is important. [0] I believe it's mistaken because, frankly, the vast majority of development work is for the very base purpose of commerce. Rarely, in cases where development is related to some scientific or artistic pursuit to advance human knowledge, it's important in any meaningful sense outside of commercial activity. On this basis, the commerce-related importance of a role necessarily implies that compensation ought to be a major factor if considered from a rational perspective.