Right, it's perfectly zen to be exploited and have the spoils of your work concentrated in the hands of a few.

I'd rather have 100 doctors earn 500k/year than one insurance admin earning $50M.

In the meantime, programmers aren't even paid overtime. Because...?

Contributing to open source != being exploited.

If you pick the one aspect that my comment isn't addressing, you can manage to dismantle it. Surprise!

There'd be more open source if programmers were paid more, not bullied into working free overtime on a salary and pressured by companies into vastly expansive, potentially illegal (but what individual has the resources to find out?) contracts that curtail their copyright to even products they develop in their free time. These cases exist.

It is a crap culture. Unfortunately, I fear it's one we'll be stuck with for some time now. In the meantime, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for us to collectively up our business-savviness a bit. Some of us have families to feed, and that only gets harder as our industry's race to the bottom continues.

"Misinformation" is that you can spend thousands on a "bootcamp" or tens of thousands on a degree from a low-tier school, and walk into a well paid secure job.