People are stupid and mean. I hate my species with a passion. It's a good thing I have a religion, that puts stipulations on me and things in a context. As an atheist I'd be a bad mofo, and not in a cool way. So working with tons of people, esp. the public in general, is definitely out for me. I can't afford anymore fuel on the fire.
I didn't work in any sweatshops during the dot com era nor know anyone who did. Rich people weren't trying to squeeze every last bit of productivity out of us at the time, they wanted us to rapidly build up things that would make them insanely rich. Accomplished software engineers who also had a good idea of what this new (to them) Internet thing was were their E tickets to building them wealth, they thought.
I really miss the optimism, however misguided it was, of that time. The positiveness. They didn't look at you when you came in for an interview like you were some nitwit fraud, they at least acted impressed. And they threw money at me, to the tune of 20% and 30% raises over prior positions. And they were happy to have me, I was happy to be there in that kind of positive and energetic environment, and to be well-compensated, and I worked hard. (Granted you may have had different experiences.)
I have to agree of course that one difference definitely between IT and other fields is the easy transferability of the work. That's a factor that sets us up for being treated less well that other occupations don't have. But I've heard that nurses are treated like shit, same for pharmacists. Even doctors are going to have worse treatment in this country, as we move on to a single-payer system and it's all about the race to the bottom in cutting costs and services to a minimum. In my area I believe dentists, once a path to a good life, are even struggling, for various reasons this is getting too long to go into.
TL;DR: I guess you're basically right about this, IT probably is worse than other fields. I just don't want to believe it, because it was so good before.