Before the first dotcom era, software jobs paid like most other professional office jobs. Decent money but nothing really remarkable.
With the dotcom boom and VC money, that changed. I doubled my salary going to a startup in 1998. I was not a better developer all of a sudden, it was just that startups had piles of money and investors demanding that they spend it.
15-20 years ago software development was still very well paid compared to 30 years ago. And then the really insane FAANG money started flowing.
> I was not a better developer all of a sudden, it was just that startups had piles of money and investors demanding that they spend it.
That's not the whole story, though. The Internet inherently changed the value prop for software work, where a small number of engineers could support a huge number of users. That leverage makes software work inherently waaaay more profitable than it was pre-Internet, which is why companies could afford to throw gobs of money at top engineering talent.
With the dotcom boom and VC money, that changed. I doubled my salary going to a startup in 1998. I was not a better developer all of a sudden, it was just that startups had piles of money and investors demanding that they spend it.
15-20 years ago software development was still very well paid compared to 30 years ago. And then the really insane FAANG money started flowing.