The problem with being smarter than average programmer is that your insights will rarely ever be considered, even if they're correct, because they're new and controversial. That's because, from the perspective of an average programmer, a bad programmer who doesn't know what they're doing, and a programmer using techniques so advanced that they cannot be understood, are effectively indistinguishable, which means that average team will treat both geniuses and morons in the same way.

I feel like the collapse of the tech bro coincided with the masses going to programming, which changed the culture from promoting innovation and development, into simply following whatever best practices someone had already written, turning programming from a creative job into yet another repetitive office job. This is also, in my opinion, the true reason why salaries collapsed. Most business don't need creative specialists, they need code monkeys, and most people aren't creative specialists, they're code monkeys. So why would the salary worthy of a creative specialist even be talked about over here?

There is a legitimate concern that if the smarter programmer quits the job, the remaining average programmers will not be able to maintain the code.

I think a smart solution would be to teach the average programmers the new concepts. Many of them would probably be happy to learn, and the company would benefit from having everyone know a bit more and use better solutions. But for some reason, this usually doesn't happen.

To summarise your first paragraph: This programming meme? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiMbeF_XoAAYAQb.jpg

And your second paragraph sounds like sour grapes. I have no idea what "the collapse of the tech bro coincided with..." means. Most programmers are working on CRUD apps. How creative do you need to be?