But a good salesperson who is making quota can also apply their craft to carving a larger piece of the pie for themselves. Just because they're doing well, it does not mean their compensation is an accurate proportion to their contribution to the whole.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should try to quantify the efficacy of SW devs more. I had a PM do that once in the form of ticket quantification as a KPI. I had to expend a lot of political capital to opt out from that nightmare.