In some places, a job at a company someone has heard of, or a job that doesn't require you to be on your feet doing manual labor all day is prestigious. These tech companies are still jobs that carry prestige and life changing money for some people, it's all relative.
When I was a corp dev living in Atlanta working at an unknown company in 2000 making $70K a year, many from the small town I came from thought that was impressive. People were impressed for some reason when I told them I was a developer at GE in 2008. It really doesn’t take much.
