Management doesn't want super-performers, because they can upset the power dynamic.
Developers must have lower status than management, and super-performers can challenge that.
Companies are actually social networks. Instead of gaining status by posting selfies of yourself in exotic locations with cool people, you gain status by making high status noises in emails, talking in a high status way, having many people reporting to you, and having equity.
Sometimes getting things done is relevant too, but not as often as it should be.
For me, it's actually not about the compensation for its own sake. It's that compensation is a strong signal of how the company thinks about the status of developers.
3 average programmers who understand your code adds a lot of redundancy.
And as an interviewer, it is really hard to identify who is 10x and who is not. But very easy to tell who has enough knowledge and pleasant personality. Programming in most companies is team sports, not a marathon.
There are tons of companies with thousands and thousands of engineers who could easily make do with 100-1000 engineers if they were willing to attract and retain top talent.
> And as an interviewer, it is really hard to identify who is 10x and who is not.
That's definitely true, but top companies manage to do it. And when they make a mistake, they rectify it.
Team sports still pay to attract top performers. The best players can be a force multiplier for everyone.
I know many programmers from FB, Google, Amazon, Apple. There is no way they are 10 or even 2x. Some of them I worked with too, so I know their work. Others are just friends, we discuss technology all the time.
> Team sports still pay to attract top performers. The best players can be a force multiplier for everyone.
You are right team sports do pay a lot of money for top talent. Unfortunately, my experience with 10x programmers, as a teammate and as a manager, has always been negative. Most of them barely produce more than average programmer on long run but demotivate entire team or department by their arrogance, talking down, complaining, rudeness.
Here in New York, this is especially acute. Many finance companies have thousands and thousands of developers. They'll have a team of developers (costing maybe $500k/yr total) working on a problem which a single excellent developer could easily accomplish (and be happy with $250k/yr).
Tons of companies are penny-wise and pound-foolish, mostly because programming is still considered a low-status profession.
> Until "management" realizes this, the only way that a developer on the upper end of the productivity scale can capture their value is to found their own company. I sometimes wonder what would happen if some company simply offered to pay 3X the market rate and mercilessly filter the results.
There are companies which do this, but they're almost exclusively pure tech companies (ex. Netflix).