Sales, Marketing, and GTM are absolutely generating 100x - 1000x their salary if they take sole ownership of a project like you are doing.

SWEs are good are solving problems, but other people determine which problems to pay attention to, and how much investment to make in them.

In many organizations, marketing is just asking customers what they want. E.g. ask a farmer from the turn of the century, they'd have said "I want a horse that pulls harder and eats less oats!"

They'd never have said "I want a tractor!"

It's Engineers that conceive of tractors.

They are the ones by talking to the customers and knowing what they need. They are the ones that know that one engineer has been working on a high power engine, and other on rugged, high traction trailers.

Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

Marketers coming up with ideas and dictating those ideas to engineers is just wrong

Eh, it's not about purely engineering. Many businesses who are not related to engineering fails exact same reason. They only care about short time growth and loses. Happens all the time.

That being said: you are absolutely right. How quickly the externalities are forgotten.

I haven't run the numbers but I have the impression that "idea people" tend to flounder without a strong technical co-founder. In contrast, technical co-founders can make it on their own, though there may certainly be challenges in doing so. Those roles are also very different in terms of what you can hire in as early employees vs what absolutely has to be a part of the founding team.

Almost everything in a big organization is a team effort, but that doesn't mean you can't tease out the relative contributions of the different parts. And I think you're undervaluing the engineering contribution substantially.

Lots of successful businesses have been founded and run by founders with no formal engineering training. They all need some level of business knowledge, but that can to some degree be learnt on the job.

Then they throw it to engineering and either take the credit or shift the blame.

SWEs at FAANG and other top tier tech companies are at a completely different level of compensation. I don’t think they’re underpaid.

And this was ten years ago when this stuff was the hot thing. This myth that big banks pay anyone in tech well needs to be dispelled. I worked at a few as well and they were all the same.

Also different banks pay better or worse. Goldman is the top of the hierarchy and pays competitively with a mid tier tech company depending on your team and role. JP Morgan is second place.

The rest of the pack (BoA, Citi, UBS, WF, others) probably can't compete with most tech companies.

Start a company then.

Pay is not determined by value, it's determined by leverage. The CEO pays himself the most money because he controls the company, he's not going to pay anyone lower than him more than he makes.

Start a company then.

Or go back in time 40 years.

It used to be very common for companies to give a portion of the yearly profits to the employees. It was called "profit sharing."

Somehow that perk evaporated in the tech industry.

High frequency trading / propriety trading firms (buy-side) make FANG TC look like public teacher TC.

400-600K USD for 22-year old new grads. With 5 YOE, TC of $1M+ is not uncommon . If you do really well, $10M+ annual TC is possible with 5-10 YOE.

Even mid-career employees get fixed % cut of company profits. I’m not even talking about the company partners either.

So yes, FANG SWEs are underpaid.

Along those lines, the number of SWEs in FAANG are tiny compared to the legions upon legions of SWEs working at nontech companies where a 60yo staff engineer retires with compensation similar to a FAANG 25yo junior engineer.

The comparison is even more dire if you bring non-US jobs into play. I’ve heard a typical Venetian gondolier is paid more than an Italian SWE.

So I disagree a FAANG engineer is underpaid compared to the vast majority of their peers at other companies.

FAANG is an anthill, and HFT firms are a wart on an ant’s thorax compared to the Mt. Everest that comprises the legions of companies that pay far, far less.