Only the total compensation is important for me. If anything, I'd rather get a stable one than a variable one. (Variable is only better, if the expected value is higher.)

In any case, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212180 you said something like

- finance people used to get normal amounts of money, now they get more - hence, software people need to do something as a collective.

I don't see how the first implies the second. Especially since the finance people didn't do anything as a collective, did they?

but many forms of greater liquidity could be possible for potential value producing software engineering roles