It's not competitive when considering non-startup work opportunities
You seem to think these are different markets - it's the same. If people are choosing them then apparently it is competitive. It may just not be what people think they should be making.
Developers should actually expect lower wages because there are more market entrants. The whole push for everyone to learn to code, almost 100% pushed for by developers, would have exactly that effect. This is why I think it's silly when the dev community pushes back on organizing as though it's going to stay a sellers market forever - especially as they push the idea (rightfully so) that being a developer/engineer is a great job and drive people into the market.
No, I think there is one unified market. It's startup owners who think there are two markets and try to get away with paying so much less than what's competitive.
This is, by the way, why they're having such trouble filling these positions. You can't just see what salaries are offered and say "that's the market salary." Companies actually offering the market salary don't have the level of hiring difficulties that startups paying $75k in SF do.
I like that my wages are high, but I don't like that lots of other people don't have good economic options. If my wages go down because more people learn to code and it becomes less of a sellers market, I'd consider that a good outcome.
Organizing to keep new coders out would just help existing coders relative to everyone else, and as a whole we're a group that's relatively well off.
