Considering inflation over the past 20 years, $100K salary is not prima donna material. Engineers aren't overpaid; they are fortunate enough to have salary keeping pace with inflation.
Much of the rest of the educated working class is underpaid, with real wages falling, due to weak bargaining power against the aristocracy.
Based on your comment then, do you believe that the only thing anyone should be really interested in is stock?
Here is why I ask, my salary ranges between 110K and 175K depending on the project, position, how interested I am in it etc...
I am a very senior infrastructure deisgner and PM.
I am 36.
To say that someone out of college getting 100K as an expected base salary is not pirma donna material -- then you are setting them up to believe that, as an engineer, their salary expectations should grow over time to say ~350K.
However - nobody pays that.
We can argue that everyone is underpaid, sure, I feel underpaid. But the truth is that the only way I am going to get a comfortable windfall is to build / sell somethinf of my own.
The fact seems to be that the mean salary is fairly flat regardless of experience in general - but in the relatively more rare cases that people cash out, there i wild profit to be made.
This is clear in SV where it is far more common for people to make out on their stock -- but that clearly indicates at least some sort of bubble for silicon valley as compared to the rest of the country/world.
Much of the rest of the educated working class is underpaid, with real wages falling, due to weak bargaining power against the aristocracy.