> The harder and more expensive it is to hire a specialist, the more important it is that the company utilize him fully. High salaries and long hours usually go together.

Until the specialist quits, and then your logic breaks completely.

Arguably, you're making him quit, since if you ever worked as a developer, you'd know there's only so many hours you can put in. Beyond that, you are burning out and generating more mistakes than valuable code.

My anecdotal observation is that both pay and work-life balance has been improving at FAANGs. I remember reading 10 years ago about how developers feel pressured to overwork in companies like Google. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore with my friends working for FAANGs.

Unless we're talking about executive-level pay (i.e. high seven figures), paying someone a few more thousands per year doesn't justify a destructive work-life balance. In fact, it's a self-defeating strategy that hasn't worked and seems to be largely abandoned by most savvy employers.