That’s my point. Ars Digita (Greenspan’s startup) was a small startup. You don’t see small startups paying 170k as a base salary nowadays. All available evidence shows that wages have fallen for software developers. If the market for software developers was tight, then we would see very different behavior from companies.

That's a TC number that includes vesting RSU right?

And? My stock vests monthly and I have it set to autosell at vest so I get cold hard cash direct deposited into my bank account monthly.

Yes, but RSU vesting is as good as cash, aside from banks not fully counting it in your income for mortgage qualification.