There is increasing bifurcation in career paths and the returns to them in the engineering community, and increasingly it appears to be severe enough that not only do the sides having difficulty empathizing with each other, they affirmatively believe the other side doesn't exist.
People who describe themselves as e.g. "product-focused engineer who spent last 10 years bouncing between startups and 'companies that issue RSUs'" have told me that no engineer in the US makes $45k. This is not a true statement.
Many, many, many e.g. freelancers who work on websites for local businesses or engineers working at software companies in Europe believe that no material number of engineers make $400k.
This is also not a true statement.
This is also not a true statement.
