These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true.

You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind".

How do you know?

And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair that the big tech companies did the following...

As a small rebuttal of sorts, consider

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

You are making less money than what you would have been making if that illegal arrangement had not been made.

Look at other unions. It's a "union" of workers so they need to have some guidelines.

Teaching for instance you know exactly how much money you'll be making over the next 20 years. Add a masters (which may or may not contribute to you being a better teacher) get a bump.

Do you believe there is a direct correlation with how long someone was working there and how productive they are? Would you like to live in this rubric? What kind of people do you think are interested in this kind of rigid rubric? It works in some places that are commoditized. A toll collector does the job, and maybe there is some merit to rewarding someone for loyalty. But programming is not that kind of job.

The best people want to work in a place where they're valued (and paid) on merit. Why shouldn't a better engineer with less formal experience be promoted above someone who has been filling a desk for the last 20 years?

>How do you know?

Well, if a European dev asked me how I could possibly know if they'd make more in a less regulated environment, I would point to American salaries.

Agree it's hard to know things and that antitrust arrangement was bad. If we're talking policy, we are implicitly accepting counterfactual reasoning (because otherwise why would we change policy).