All professions that don't have gatekeepers, certification, and strong professional associations suffer from declining salaries.
The difference between good and bad web dev is the difference between a site that scales, is maintainable, secure, and reliable, and looks nice, as opposed to a WP site that does none of the above. (But looks nice - maybe.)
I've talked to "designers" who say things like "I don't know if we can do that - I leave all those details to my technical people."
It turns out all the "designer" did was pick a font and a colour scheme and draw a few wireframes. And they got the job because they knew someone on the board.
Meanwhile the "technical people" have done all the real work - and could probably make a site look just as good if they'd been asked to.
That comment is also for everyone who mentioned that the post reflects only to the state of a single business instead of an entire community, ecosystem and the business of web development as a whole.
"You can't call yourself an engineer when you don't have a degree from an engineering school", "You are not an architect if you didn't study architecture in college" blah blah blah
Can we please put these debates to rest? it's tiring already. Yeah, recruitment is frustrating since everyone likes to over inflate or lie outright about the accomplishments and qualifications on their CV but it's been established a long time ago that this is part of the process and the onus is on the interviewer or recruiter to screen the applicants and tell who's the real deal and who's not, it's part of their job after all.