> Of course, good managers should generate a lot more value than a janitor or a cashier

If I can be excused to ramble a bit...

I think the job is optimization? If so the hypothetical perfect manager would get it right really fast and have nothing to do but wait for the next dumpster fire that might never happen or some micro optimization that isn't worth much.

Measuring performance (at least in real time) seems hard if not impossible?

With a cashier it is easy, if they handle 100 products per minute, 6000 per hour, they get 12 per hour or 0.2 cents per product handled, on the average product it is a perceptional difference of zero. I, as the customer buying 100 products, don't care if I pay 20 cents or 2 euro.

I've had a hundred such jobs, did the math on many, it was spectacularly hilarious. Best one was 5 factory workers making half a million boxes of cookies in a 5 hour shift for 35 euro/day. They could easily pay 1000 euro/day, the customer wouldn't even notice it.

In stead it is really hard for them now, they cant find employees. They are far behind on schedule. Existing employees are made to work even harder.

Being unable to afford to pay more is actually not how it works. You add up what it costs to deliver a service or a product and then you conclude if its a viable business model.

It is not that the rent is to dmn high, parts or ingredients are to expensive, employees are unwilling to work for peanuts etc. There is no limit on how much a janitor costs. The market sets it, employees and employers are just dragged along - kicking and screaming if need be.

If we continue the story and say the employees want to much money we might end up back at their rent being to dmn high.

But surely no one would continue that story to the point where you cant find employees because the cookies got 1 cent more expensive?

I get 2 letters every year, one says my rent goes up by 5%, the other says my salary goes up by 1%. Both talk similarly about inflation. It's quite comical.

I’d say there are many people without the skills to be a top tier engineer. In fact I picked my IC to manager conversions based on their inability to progress as an IC but their empathetic and organizational abilities let them be a credible engineering manager. They weren’t great engineers but they were good enough to know what good work looks like. However the absolute best IC engineers that commanded the most money could easily have been a successful manager but enjoyed IC work more, and were much more valuable making engineering decisions than holding 1:1s and meeting with auditors. They were effectively matrix managers in many respects. That’s a much more rare skill, and you can’t mentor someone into being a top engineer. They’re born, and are born at the same rate as they always have been, and are there for much more rare as the industry and demand has grown.