A high performer that can produce 5x on a consistent basis in one job will only be able to produce maybe 2.5x on multiple jobs with significantly more convoluted career progression and schedules. Context switching and context setting are both quite difficult.

But a 5xer will quickly promoted to principal level (L6) within a decade of entering their industry if they hop around a couple of times.

L6s usually make 2.5x of what their peers make. So the conventional process really isn't that bad.

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Honestly, if you can consistently produce 5x and provide good estimates, then you should be consultant / contract hire for mid-tier companies. You will make a lot more money and have a lot more agency over your own life.

Finding clients is a hustle, but so is holding 3 jobs at the same time. So, pick your poison.

It's not my experience that high performers get paid more than peers, people who switch employers and negotiate better pay are the ones that are paid more. Staying at one company and working on career progression is a slow grind to good pay.

The way I see it is that I can come in to a fresh role on that 2.5x peer rate by performing a solid interview at architect/principal level. I then do this for multiple roles concurrently then I'm on 7.5x my peers. Which is actually a pretty good estimate to what I know I'm making in relation to others. I also find the principal/architect roles are sometimes less hands on and you're being paid for knowledge and advice, so it actually makes it less of a burden to product high output.

That’s where the “hop around” comes in.

Man this is true. I tried splitting a week between two contract gigs and I was wiped out by end-of-week. It wasn't worth the money.

I feel like this is the post-covid take on the classic SO thread: "I automated my job, do I have to tell my boss" [1]

It really depends if you view employment as "they are paying you for 40 hours per week" or "they are paying you for a specified output, good for you if you can get it done faster!"

[1] https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/93696/is-it-un...

It's an interesting point but I think that we're honestly vastly overestimating how highly performing high performers can be - 5x is a pretty reasonable number to me for an extreme skill gap including an experience gap but ruling out the most junior folks.

We've already got a wage spread that more than covers 5x with most folks fresh out of college looking at 50k/annual if they're outside of SV and some devs within SV making 500k or more.

A 10x can't be a 1x in 10 places. Maintaining 10x the average productivity requires being in harmony with the work environment, the environment makes the 10x engineer as much as he makes himself, you can't do that while working 10 jobs.

This is all good if you’re just given sprint tasks and expected to crank out code for them without much supervision. What happens when any 2 of the 5 jobs decide to schedule a recurring meeting at the same time?

I currently run 3 full time contracts concurrently, and yes meetings clash, but it's easy to get meetings rescheduled if you just ask. Sometimes I have two calls on at the same time if I know its a call where I'm mainly going to be listening. Can always claim "bad internet" and drop out of one to answer question in another.