The counter point is that companies are profitable despite high salaries. That suggests an engineers contributions exceed even the bloated salary and therefore they are undercompensated.
I think a lot of people paid that much are reaping the benefits of strategic and tactical decisions made over decades -- they just happen to be there when it's all paying off and things are going well.
Not sure what to make of this other than that if, as a developer, you want to be paid well, go to a company that's "winning" and has mountains of cash. Shocker, I know.
(Though, as someone who's worked at a few places early, it does irritate me more than a little that these people take so little risk and yet are so highly compensated, relative to the guys who were there at the beginning getting things set up from scratch. Being an early employee at a startup is really such a shit deal - you take most of the risk, get a fraction of the equity of a founder, work hard, and don't get paid nearly as much as the people who come in 10-20 years after the strong groundwork has been laid)
