Ok, that's absolutely not true in the tech world. I was chatting with some friends that also speak frequently to developer-centric audiences and we were all commiserating how hard it is to get basic necessities when speaking - it's a challenge finding conferences that will pay for a hotel room, let alone actually pay you to speak at the conference. Really the only time you can ever expect to get paid to speak is if you're doing training or a workshop - conferences are a complete wash.