Well, I am someone with 25 years of experience, does that count as "worked closely with"?

Good junior devs are... well, by definition, good. They're just younger, and less experienced - but every bit as smart as you are, and pretty skilled in the art of coding. If anything, they have more time than I do and are a lot more eager to "prove themselves".

I don't view the value I add as "can code features faster"...

Good junior devs can also have 15+ years of non professional experience from starting as a kid. It's a wide enough bucket that talking about just the top end is very misleading, however the median jr dev is relatively slow and bug prone.

If they have not done any real coding before going to uni I could understand - this BTW is what the raspberry pi was originally created for.

> I don't view the value I add as "can code features faster"

I do, at least partly. I can code so much faster that my cost per feature is lower than a junior dev.

Your cost is less by being paid more? Seems legit

His projects are most likely successful and profitable. The junior devs is probably a comparative catastrophe. I honestly don't get where this junior devs are faster meme is coming from, it sure doesn't represent my experience.

My cost is less by doing more in the same amount of time.

Which is offset by the fact that you're paid significantly more

The point you keep missing is that the amount I'm paid more isn't equivalent to the amount more I can do than a junior dev. I perform at some X more than the junior dev, but I'm not paid X more.

It's good to know you have such a high view of yourself in comparison to others

It's not my view, it's my manager's view, as well as simple math.

I have.

It was staggering how they had managed to survive for 25+ years. Every person is different.

He may have been far worse 25 years ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Having not worked with the same person for 25 years I can only speak of the average case.