It's not that the average CS grad can't expect to make 100k, it's that when that was the case 100k was a meaningful amount, now the same purchasing power requires 235k and almost nobody is making 235k in any job role, career pursuit, or field of study. Those that are making 235k aren't experiencing the same lifestyle because they don't exist in the same context, they exist in a context where they're surrounded by depression, scarcity, scrounging, and know that their time could be up at any moment.

The world is in a different place, and while it's funny to joke about how privileged tech people are, the net effect is that we've lost one of the most accessible refuges into a decent career for people. Many of us in tech, including myself, got into this without even a CS degree using free resources online and through libraries to learn about computers and build skills. It's basically inconceivable for anyone who is ambitious and a self-starter to build a career outside of extremely competitive, hierarchical, formal lines in 2026 except maybe as a social media influencer, which is probably why most people under 25 say their dream/goal is to become an influencer. It's their only shot at not being stuck in a state of permanent grinding misery to uphold wealthy elites.

I wasn't joking, just trying to compact my thoughts. The lifestyle and abundance we sold the last generation of university students turned out to be wholly out of reach for all but the luckiest and most well-connected, and that disillusion is why we feel so much like crap, even when we point out we're still objectively far ahead of the global average.

This sounds like a bit of romance for the past, and if any software developers are thinking about "grinding misery", it wasn't any better in the past. My salary as a junior developer in the early 2000s was about $60k, on average. I met someone who had given up a $100k networking job (to do church ministry), and I remember $100k feeling like a number that was just not ever going to be in the realm of possibility for me. Now all the numbers have gone up, but the relatively percentages are about the same. (Except commercial rent, that is a terrible value in my area, but housing prices are reasonable.)