I completely agree with your assessment that software engineers aren't exactly fungible, but I also don't think the authors of this paper are wrong. Salaries re

I completely agree with your assessment that software engineers aren't exactly fungible, but I also don't think the authors of this paper are wrong. Salaries really should be much higher than they are. If companies started paying 2x-3x current rates they would start attracting very senior people who would spend the time necessary to retrain for the positions paying a lot more. Also, at 2x-3x the rates, some business models would cease to be viable, freeing up the developers working on those businesses to be available for hire by the companies rating in the dough. We really haven't begun to scratch the surface of trying to fix this problem by being more competitive with salary.