Haha, I appreciate the candor, and earnest response!

> Anyways, the demand for software engineers increased extremely significantly (multiples of open positions, rates doubled) when Covid started and all remaining companies hopped on the digital transformation trend; and that continues to today.

I agree, it's why I came back to tech actually; I wasn't satisfied with where the fintech Industry was heading in the 'blockchain' craze and decided that while the pay was good, the most I had ever been offered actually in any job, I'd be dedicating my life to something I knew was a farce and we couldn't deliver because of abject greed to cash-in on the flavor of the month.

> Your characterization of the programmers market seems totally out of loop.

I never said the demand didn't exist, I said that their is a deluded sense of self-worth that is so out of touch with reality from the comments I quoted that it's astonishing to hear people make so much and still be like 'well that guys has more, so I should too.'

That level of greed is what puts me off so much from this Industry because it resembles banking, its also a red signal that we have entered what is likely a bubble in programmer salaries which for me as a person just getting back in to tech after a 5 year absence to study AI and ML (arguably the most frothy of all programming roles) makes me step and re-evaluate things.