Haha, depends on where you are at I guess. Maybe you need to move? Or just save some of what my grandfather liked to call "fuck you" money. Enough so that at any time you can tell your boss "fuck you" and you go find another job. Otherwise you'll just get bullied by your boss forever.
Anyway, more on topic, I hear there is a shortage of talent in the Bay Area. Although...since there are only so many LGBT software engineers who are good, software engineers who are good but who don't understand cost-of-living, single and straight software engineers that are good but don't understand that California girls are trained from birth to be cocaine-snorting psychotic leeches who will rob you blind (true story), etc.
Eventually you will see companies discover that they could move to tech hubs in places like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, etc...and have far less trouble finding qualified people (although like anywhere else you still have to weed through the dunces) because these are places a normal, non-fucked-up person who is missing some critical piece of their logical reasoning would actually consider living. So some companies will move. And while the average income would decrease every time that happens, the quality of life would increase quite a bit.
You might disagree with me for hating on the Bay Area, but I doubt there is anything anyone could possibly say to change my mind, and there are a ton of people who think the same way :D You just can't live a normal life in a place like that. Otherwise there wouldn't be a shortage there, because I hear the scenery is nice and the weather is great...
Another move is that I'm seeing it is popular to move into consulting (especially baby boomers)....so their entire incomes wouldn't necessarily show up on "salary" averages. A savvy consultant will "pay" himself as little salary as possible to avoid donating good money to the bottomless pit of the IRS.
No, things are on the uptick. The smart engineers are collectively getting smarter. The dumb ones are are getting screwed, but that story hasn't exactly changed in the past decades. There was a small blip in the late 90's where any idiot could put on a software engineer hat and make money, and those same idiots have been camping out in the industry like fat squirrels around an empty bird feeder. Eventually they'll go away. :D