The reason average programmers today don't make on average 779,000 dollars a year, is because like many things, programming hours and talent have been commoditized. There are many people that can learn how to perform these programming tasks. It's easier and more accessible than ever.
The point of the post is that we aren't in a labor bubble, because the amount of value created by a programmer is much higher than the programmer's salary. For instance, suppose that a contractor installing marble countertops on luxury houses out in the desert gets paid 100k a year. It turns out that the value of those countertops is below 100k a year. This could be used to suggest that the jobs themselves will disappear (or salaries must drop dramatically), as the value they generate isn't sufficient to justify that pay.
Now suppose installing those countertops generate 200k a year in value, but that it is relatively easy. That would suggest that salaries could drop even though there is a surplus of value in the existing salary structure. However, it wouldn't suggest that salaries need to drop because value generated isn't sufficient to justify the pay level.
I think that's the point here - that the amount of value generated is so great that programmer salaries could remain high. It doesn't necessarily mean then will, just that we aren't in a salary bubble where salaries are higher than value generated.
True. We should have fought it. We should still be fighting it. If commoditization is doomed to happen, then there's a structure (called a union) that enables it to happen on our terms rather than theirs.
Your argument seems to ignore that market forces agreed that engineers were underpaid, and it was only by illegal collusion that their wages were kept to what they were.
Very true. We have the value-add potential that, on paper, would justify upward of $700,000 per year. Unfortunately, most of us are managed ineptly and so much of that value is squandered. There are plenty of ways that the surplus generated by our talents could be spent (expansion, higher salaries) but right now it's wasted on a high tolerance for mismanagement.
Who wants to hire that attitude?
Programmers can add immense value relative to the cost of employing them. There are many ways in which this surplus could be reinvested. Unfortunately, it tends to be invested in tolerance of mismanagement.
We're capable of adding value at 5x our base salary (and that's a low estimate; 20-100x is defensible) but this gives corporations an excuse to run us at ~20% efficiency.
The percentage of managers in technology/software who add more than they take away is small: maybe 5 percent. Another 15 percent or so are essentially neutral, and the other 80 percent do more damage than they add.