Is making more every year that important? At some point, you reach an asymptote where you're not particularly more valuable than the prior year and then your pay goes up with inflation rather than the 10+% per year that it was going up early in your career (when your value was going up 20+% per year)
I'd be curious to hear the field you choose that has better compensation prospects than the salary ceiling for software development, especially if you're going to be doing development in your free time because you love it. Hell, just get paid to develop for your day job and be stuck at "only" a decent 6-figure salary.
Yes, because nobody has a crystal ball that can guarantee them a future where they'll continue to make that kind of money throughout the rest of their careers.
Yes, because the business-types who run the world want to see a steady stream of promotions, or else they come to the conclusion that not only are you NOT worthy of more money, but you probably aren't worth what you're currently making.
I have friends who were forced to become third party contractors because the only vertical movement for their salaries within the corporate structure required them to become managers, which was an undesirable move for them. So they contracted out to their previous employers instead at more than twice their previous salaries.
It's really not all that good, because you aren't thinking in terms of careers. A (real) engineer goes to school to be an engineer, gets his license to practice engineering, and from then on is largely assured to receive increasing salaries from that point onward. Sure, the tools may change, but real world experience on actual engineering problems is seen as irreplaceable by employers.
A developer by contrast is judged by the tools he uses just as much as his tenure, and his tenure becomes a net negative after a period of time. Because wages rise faster and stagnate faster, corporate types see them as replaceable sooner. This might not mean much to people who hop from job to job every year or two, but for a lot of people, they just want a place to work and feel secure.
I know a hell of a lot more 80 year old lawyers, accountants, doctors, and engineers than I do 50 year old developers.
There are places to go find a secure, long career.
I'm coming up on 14 years at my current company (developer to executive) and there's a developer working here who is longer tenured than me and still happily coding away. Of course, there's some element of luck of finding a good place, with a good business model, good leadership, good execution, not getting hit by a meteor, etc, but it's clear that not everyone job hops every 2 years.
You won't find me as an 80-year old technologist, because I'll have made way more than enough to retire 25 years before then.
I started at $35K in 1993. That's a 4.5% compounded growth rate to $100K today.
You started at $53K in 2006. That's only a 5.9% compounded growth rate to $100K today. That same 4.5% CAGR gets you to $86K today, and $86K in a lower cost-of-living place than Boston is still a pretty sweet starting point (if your $53K was in a place with a lower cost of living than Boston, for instance).
I'd be curious to hear the field you choose that has better compensation prospects than the salary ceiling for software development, especially if you're going to be doing development in your free time because you love it. Hell, just get paid to develop for your day job and be stuck at "only" a decent 6-figure salary.