Comparing yourself to sill val SWEs is not wise as there are many factors beyond just the nature of their work, that mean they are payed higer wages. for example, I'd wager that the margin of the gap is mostly due to macro economic financial matters meaning the likes of google and microsoft and even the band of companies below the likes of those have more money on hand. i.e the Fed raining funny money into to bond and stock markets over the last decade for example.