I work on the infrastructure side (as a programmer, there are programmers on that side as well believe it or not) and this has been my experience as well. The

I work on the infrastructure side (as a programmer, there are programmers on that side as well believe it or not) and this has been my experience as well. The last 10 years or so have seen outsize investment in the product focused roles and comparatively little in infrastructure. Generally speaking the trend has been "who cares just move it to the cloud" and then proceeding to not hire sufficiently to work on that infrastructure, which then leads to a move to a more expensive more managed version of the cloud, on and on until you are in a really bad spot and find yourself paying out the ass for an MSP. There are way way fewer people with experience on the infrastructure side now as a result of basically being ignored for a decade, and so pay has been increasing rapidly. Just go look at the department handling your company network or whatever you've got for infrastructure. Half those people are on deaths door. What's the plan for retirements when everybody new is just being funneled into front end development?