Yup, agreed. My experience is that even the "rockstars" get fired or managed out when they become "difficult". The only places where these types of people are tolerated -- but still, not forever -- is very small shops where bus factors are low and firing a key software developer would wipe out a company-killing amount of institutional knowledge. Even then, those people are still replaced, eventually.

It's the height of hubris to believe that an individual software engineer has the power to effect much in the way of change when it comes to wages and working conditions. Sure, we have orders of magnitude more power than someone working for pennies in a sweatshop, but we're nowhere near the point of calling the shots, or even bringing a significant amount of leverage to the negotiating table.