> Secondly, it means that non-giant companies could be competitive in making job offers, whereas perhaps in a more free labor market they might not be able to compete salarywise with Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Thus, as seen from say, a startup's vantage point, this check on the upward price pressure actually kept the supply of affordable engineers up.

Actually, it just gave the non-engineers more leverage. If the engineering rates where higher, there would be more engineers who would be founders. Engineers would have a larger % of the startup, since non-cash compensation would have to be offered.

Also, the artificial deflation caused some engineers to be stuck in a bad job.

That's why I won't be anyone's employee. It's a bad deal for me. It's a bad deal for many engineers who are employees right now.

Unfortunately, it took me a while to learn the game. There's a business side to being an engineer. You don't learn that being an employee. It's against the interest of the management to have their employed engineers think that way.