>A few thousand software developers can and did obviate maybe million+ secretaries, travel agents, book sellers, retail middlemen, map makers, camera manufacturers, advertisers etc.

Imagine what it would have been like if the million+ were uplifted instead by the same amount of developer effort.

Now I expect most tech creatives will never know how much more you can get done when you have an above-average secretary compared to just another average engineer.

Apple and their kind have such high profits per employee because all the outsourced workers don't count as Apple employees.