I'm sorry: In my career, I've been through a lot in the OP and more, all really wasteful nonsense. As a result, I've concluded:

In the US, for significant, long term financial security, it is close to essential to start, own, and run a business and make it successful.

As a young person in a hot field, being an employee can look good, but usually too soon, well before retirement, being an employee is awful.

For computing: If computing is valuable, and of course it can be very valuable, then somehow a person in computing needs not to be an employee but to own their own business and make it successful.

Broadly a key to being successful in business is to sell directly or nearly so to the end user. So, in computing, for the business, develop a product or service that sells to, gets revenue (or eyeballs for ad revenue, here and below) from, the end user. For this, pick a problem the end users want solved and that you can solve with computing, have a barrier to entry, ..., and get the revenue. Try to have the product, service so that the number of end users times the net revenue from each makes a good business, e.g., gets you some good financial security.

There is a huge, but easily overlooked, difference: (A) As an employee, you are getting all your money from your employer, only from your employer, and they know exactly how much money you are getting. If the employer concludes that they are paying you more than necessary, then they will work to pay you less. It's super tough to get good financial security as an employee from an employer. (B) As a business owner, you are getting money from usually at least a few and often many users, and usually the users have no idea what your profit margins and net revenue are, and, even if your revenue is high and they know it, there's next to nothing they can do about it. So, if you can find a way to get a lot of net revenue, then you have a good chance of some good financial security; the users have little or no way to keep you from the revenue.

In simple terms, if your work is valuable, then you should get a lot of money for it. Being an employee is a poor way to get that money; instead, your employer gets the big bucks. So, own your own business and keep that money, the big bucks, plus what would have been your employee's salary, for yourself.

In the terms of the OP, there are some huge advantages in owning your own business. To illustrate this point, I will draw from the best example I have, my startup:

I saw the problem, did some applied math technical work for a solution, designed a Web site as the means of delivering the solution, designed the rest of the software, learned a little HTML and CSS (but no JavaScript -- didn't need it) and Microsoft's .NET Framework (for writing applications software), ASP.NET (for Web pages), ADO.NET (for programming use of relational database, e.g., Microsoft's SQL Server), typed in 24,000 programming language statements in 100,000 lines of typing, and am going live on the Internet ASAP.

Well, all I had to learn was just what I needed, and for more I didn't learn it. So, e.g., compared with C#, I prefer Visual Basic .NET as easier to learn, teach, read, write, and debug and otherwise, as access to .NET, etc., essentially equivalent to C#. E.g., C# has much of the deliberately idiosyncratic syntax of C, a language designed to be really sparse and low level and to compile and run on a 5 KB DEC mini computer; and C++ was originally just a pre-processor to C (in those days, language pre-processors, e.g., RATFOR, were popular). So, for me, to heck with the C# syntax, and I have not studied C# and have yet to write a single line of it.

Yes, apparently Python is quite useful and very popular. As I understand it, it is interpretative which means it can be easier to use but slow. As I understand it, Microsoft's Iron Python is compiled and provides good access to .NET. As I understand it, Python has some really nice software "packages". Maybe in time I will need or be able to make good use of Python; then I will learn and use it. But so far I've had no use for Python and have not used, learned, or even installed it.

Python is just an example: I just learn and get needed experience with the software tools I need for my startup, and that's much, much less than would would be needed for the scenarios, in my experience accurate as a parody, in the OP.

Now what I concentrate on learning is not software tools (so far I have what I need and from early in my career much more) but what I need for my business, e.g., now, getting good initial data, publicity, and products (processors, motherboards, main memory, mass storage, etc.), and server construction, monitoring, maintenance, and administration.

E.g., for my servers, can I use AMD Ryzen processors with ECC (error correcting coding) main memory and Windows Server 2016 (that wants ECC main memory)?

So, I'm 100% owner of my startup. Thus, if there is good value in my software, then I will get that all that value instead of some only some small fraction of that value with some employer getting the rest.

So, to respond to the situation in the OP, I suggest that people who can write valuable software should start their own business, own 100% of it, pick a good problem, write valuable software for a valuable solution, and collect the big bucks themselves.

E.g., the OP has the employer asking really dumb questions. Why should a good software developer put up with such nonsense? They shouldn't and, instead, should have their own business. Such nonsense is not a good path for either the employer or the employee to make much money.