There's jobs where you work 80 hours per week to maybe make $50-60k, and are so physical your body will be shot by 40 or 50...
Devs get compensated extremely well.
Because that's the alternative. Either we advocate or they take more and more
But have some perspective, there's a ton of far worse jobs...
Yes, there are far worse jobs. Yes, being a slave is infinitely worse than being a software engineer.
But that's like saying "oh, using 3G isn't that bad, dial-up is worse." Sure, but if you can get fiber-optic, that's better. A lot better. And you'll do better work that way (assuming you use the internet in your work, which, if you're a dev, you probably do).
"Oh, running our entire infrastructure on a 10 year old ThinkPad isn't that bad, it could be worse, we could have a PDP-11". Sure, and you could also rent a beast of a server from OVH/Hetzner/etc for relatively cheap, and that might make life a little nicer, for you, and for your customers.
If you've got half your workforce burning out, that's a fucking issue, and while yes, compared to 99% of jobs that ever existed (medival peasant, prostitute, garbage man, street musician, cashier) this is quite nice, if people keep developing mental health issues as a result of it, that's an issue.
And in that case, if the "market solution" is basically unionize to demand better conditions...
Workers can't influence markets like the billionaire class, that's why they need to be heavily regulated with social protections enshrined in law.
Absurd Schedules - Yes
Unrealistic Deadlines - Yes
Competing Colleageues -Yes
Toxic environment - Yes
Hard to switch - Yes
Outsourcing - Yes
Training your replacements -Yes
How is this easy mode? Mental labor can be as bad or even worse than Physical labor. Atleast you hit a brick wall with physical. Your enemy is inivisible when its mental.