It is possible that programmers are taking less money than their worth due to the fact that our jobs are basically fun, but that’s an exploitation rather than a feature.
No one sets pay rates. Pay for labor in a free market economy is determined purely by supply and demand. So literally the entire concept of "paid less than their worth" is nonsense, because the economy is what is evaluating "the worth". Here's a simple question, how would you prove that someone is "being paid less than their 'worth'"? I can fantasize any figure for my "true worth" and make noise about being paid less than it; it's just as meaningless.
It also occurred to me that the movement to make most IT jobs 100% remote depresses pay which would normally be based on local standard of living (much higher in cities)
As a person doing that exact thing right now, I 100% sympathize with the hate there. It's awful. It's like being single, except your survival depends on it.
Paradoxically, I'd prefer 60% onsite/40% remote due to being a bit ADD.
If you insist people get the same pay no matter how enjoyable the job is, then you're implying people should get the same pay for jobs that make people feel like shit.
May have been true of the 2000s. But the 2010s and 2020s, not much “fun” to be had cleaning up the shit architecture of 2000s; and getting rid of “legacy” tech (ie, mainframe).
It’s a grind, m8. Companies today just acquire their competition, “trim the fat”, pump the stock. There hasn’t been any new innovation in this industry in a long time.
Part of your "pay package" is that you get to be purely creative, making machines that do things out of literal thin air.
None of those other people get to do that.