That said, I think this is only achievable because of how relatively young and greenfield software is - the industry hasn't existed for more than a eighty years in any real sense (and arguably didn't really begin until things moved from academic to commercial in the seventies or so) and thus a lot of software can add massive value to society while doing relatively simple things. I think in a few hundred years all the low hanging fruit will be gone and software development will be extremely different from these wild-west days but right now yea - the value you can produce for a business can absolutely justify pretty ridiculous salaries.
I think the important counter point for humility here is that those folks aren't particularly special, maybe a 700k architect is a literal genius at the peak of their career, but there are other folks out there that are just as creative and making 80k. Maybe we just need to think of the strange wage imbalance in development as being as fickle and arbitrary as celebrity - could that actor at the local playhouse have been the next Jennifer Lawrence if only they'd gotten cast for the role? Quite possibly, but luck wasn't on their side and passed them over.
I'd say that people that command such high salaries are certainly worth it (in the cases I've seen at least) but they have also benefited from some fantastic luck in their career progression - they could've been someone else and be earning far less for the same set of skills.
If you write a webapp to solve a $5000/day problem, that’s worth $X. If your company sells that to 10 companies, your work is worth 10X. But if it’s sold to 10000, wow.
Think of your work in terms of value provided to the buyer, not in terms of cost to yourself. Thus you unlock career potential
If the webapp can solve $5000/day problem but there is literally millions of people that can do this, you are certainly not getting a share of that. Somebody else is maybe going to be rewarded for spotting an opportunity but the most you get is a "market rate".
The only way you can get paid proportionally is if you are literally the only one that can solve the problem and you know it and they know you know it.
Your goal is to maximize the value delivered. Their goal is to minimize how much of the value you capture.
You’ll find balance somewhere in the middle.
And ultimately there’s only so much a company will pay if they can’t extract value out of your work. Regardless of how good you are.
I think it's important to recognize the semi-arbitrary source of where this value is coming from and understand that while employees impacting a lot of customers are indeed creating a lot of value the work they are doing isn't significantly different from the work made by folks with more modest salaries.
Basically, at the core, I think there's a significant ethical question here and I would highlight the relative infancy of the industry. It's likely that in a few hundred years all this incredible value creation will be highly commoditized and that innovative development will be relegated to academic pursuits that companies only adopt and bring to market after a lot of investigation and research.
Uh hrm - as another parallel you might compare this to speed running. Right now we can do relatively simple things to dramatically create value (time saved off the run) but as time goes on and the run gets more "perfected" then the ability to shave time off the run (or create value for the business) will require a lot more investment of effort. I'm not certain if this will happen since everything in how development works points to this being a really hard state of the industry to accomplish - but looking at economic trends it feels inevitable that eventually it will be more profitable to, for instance, produce a cheaper better whatsapp then being the first market entrent into the coveted Deciduous Tree Vlog Platform market.
I worked at a startup, became amazed at the sales crew’s ability to find buyers. I could make the app (and Co. could find few willing & capable to), but in no way could find anyone to fork over that much for it.
Google for example makes about 7-figures per employee. That’s a loooot of room to negotiate.
In non-tech companies, IT is seen as a cost. Half the time your contribution is just saving the company from hiring x number of people to do the work manually.
Think of it as a $200k salary with $500k of "just to ensure you won't find a better offer elsewhere" on top.
These aren't the kind of roles you can work your way into. You have to be in the right place at the right time and be there for a long time.
Sorry for grammar. On mobile but wanted to quickly contribute.
I was incredibly lucky in my last role. Something I don't think I'll ever be able to match again.
When I joined the company as a sysadmin there were 30 staff, and they really liked the work I did and eventually they put me on this innovation incentive scheme that basically said "If you keep delivering innovative solutions and driving the technology direction in the way that you are, we will pay you a bonus of 1.5% of the profit made from e-commerce sales every 4"
At the time sales profit from e-commerce channels was about 250k for each period, so a very nice $3500~ bonus every 4 months.
When I left the company ~15 years later:
- 5000+ staff
- Had moved into a role managing a large team of sysadmins and was responsible for the technical innovation strategy/direction of the business overall.
- Same CEO and and my original "IT manager" was now the CTO who I still reported into.
- They kept me on the same bonus scheme for my whole time at the company.
- By the time I left online sales profit for each 4 month period was $50,000,000.
Right place, right time, right people.
:-)
I gave up a lot for that job and worked damn hard though. I let it consume me and ended up very unhealthy.
Short gigs where you being in a solution, point a team/company on the right direction and then jump off compensate for the accrued knowledge transfer more than for the hour worked
Think of it like a top end athlete, they aren't paid for the few hours of play, but for the years of training that keep them competitive