The "market participants" ie the hiring managers were willing to pay 150k. Either they had a ligitimate use for the skill hired and were willing to pay the current market rate OR they had no idea what the market rate was.
Frankly we should all be proud of any kid, with nothing more than a high school diploma, that can negotiate such a salary. If the hiring manager was snowballed by such an individual then he would in fact be a dipshit.
I guess, there is a simple misunderstanding here. I was not talking about one of two kids making obnoxiously high salaries --- I was talking about average salaries (classified by experience level) in the industry.
It was the market demand and limited supply that drove salaries that high.
Who was paying those salaries? It's a mistake to think (as socialist always do) that it was corporations. Corporations are merely pipelines: it was consumers (all of Americans) and shareholders (more than one half of all Americans) that paid that extra salary. Has a single sole complained that it is unfair for a 20-year-old kid who cannot even read well be paid $150,000 by some retiree and consumers? Nobody even mentioned that. Neither did I: I don't know any forces that work better than the market; I programmers get high salaries --- well then, it's unavoidable; let them have a party. But now the market forces have taken care of the shortage: the supply is up, the salaries are down. Now those people are whining.
I hope it's clear now that I was not talking about some kid that lives on my block.