The average is still 100k. Acting like all engineers are somehow the rare FAANG hires who are making 250k+ is absurd. Further, you ignore the context in which "the wealthy" is used, which is describing those who profit directly from extracting value from labor of those who work beneath them. You know, the people who can offer someone 100k in salary because they know they'll make tenfold in profit back anyways.
And in some ways, the average SE is still in the same realm as someone making a third of what they do. Many are still just one particularly bad string of unfortunate events away from financial ruin, and it’s not even necessarily their fault with how high CoL is in many places now.
In terms of planes of existence, most SEs live on a layer much closer to those inhabited by the average person than they are to the layer that big tech C-suites and the like exist on.
