So what? Because somebody has it worse means billionaires can exploit us without recourse?

Because that's the alternative. Either we advocate or they take more and more

It's fine to demand more. I'm a believer in market power.

But have some perspective, there's a ton of far worse jobs...

The problem with the "it could be worse" line of thinking is it ignores that it could also be better.

Yes, there are far worse jobs. Yes, being a slave is infinitely worse than being a software engineer.

But that's like saying "oh, using 3G isn't that bad, dial-up is worse." Sure, but if you can get fiber-optic, that's better. A lot better. And you'll do better work that way (assuming you use the internet in your work, which, if you're a dev, you probably do).

"Oh, running our entire infrastructure on a 10 year old ThinkPad isn't that bad, it could be worse, we could have a PDP-11". Sure, and you could also rent a beast of a server from OVH/Hetzner/etc for relatively cheap, and that might make life a little nicer, for you, and for your customers.

If you've got half your workforce burning out, that's a fucking issue, and while yes, compared to 99% of jobs that ever existed (medival peasant, prostitute, garbage man, street musician, cashier) this is quite nice, if people keep developing mental health issues as a result of it, that's an issue.

And in that case, if the "market solution" is basically unionize to demand better conditions...

The problem with saying "market power" is that it implicitly condones that those with money are correct since they have influence over the market.

Workers can't influence markets like the billionaire class, that's why they need to be heavily regulated with social protections enshrined in law.