Probably goes to show that tech bubbles are real - perhaps for every developer/engineer working at big tech or in startups there are several working at SMBs or in other industries on unsexy line of business stuff for mediocre or low wages?
I've certainly applied for jobs at a few non-tech places (or at least places were they don't identify themselves as tech even when it's pretty central) in non-coastal states and discovered that even asking for $80k or more can be asking for much more than current leads or senior devs/engineers are being paid. Has lead to some awkward phone interviews. At some of them there also seems to be a sort of naive thing going on where they don't feel comfortable paying developer "engineers" the same or more than their "real" (mechanical, civil, chemical, aerospace, etc.) engineers when they're hiring someone to "just" work on web-based line-of-business type stuff.
(Somewhat related, I'm veryvery done with job ads/recruitments that don't somehow indicate competitive compensation up front. So many places sort of understand that they don't pay well, but feel like it's somehow justified because employees are supposed to put the business first or something stupid, and still seem to think they can find decent employees. Which, given that wages in many places don't seem like they've changed much over the last few years, they probably are at least finding minimum viable employees at their rates.)
I've certainly applied for jobs at a few non-tech places (or at least places were they don't identify themselves as tech even when it's pretty central) in non-coastal states and discovered that even asking for $80k or more can be asking for much more than current leads or senior devs/engineers are being paid. Has lead to some awkward phone interviews. At some of them there also seems to be a sort of naive thing going on where they don't feel comfortable paying developer "engineers" the same or more than their "real" (mechanical, civil, chemical, aerospace, etc.) engineers when they're hiring someone to "just" work on web-based line-of-business type stuff.
(Somewhat related, I'm very very done with job ads/recruitments that don't somehow indicate competitive compensation up front. So many places sort of understand that they don't pay well, but feel like it's somehow justified because employees are supposed to put the business first or something stupid, and still seem to think they can find decent employees. Which, given that wages in many places don't seem like they've changed much over the last few years, they probably are at least finding minimum viable employees at their rates.)