Working alongside someone with significantly better employment conditions than you is disproportionately unpleasant, to the point that working under objectively worse conditions feels better.

I don't think that's a universal thing. I would rather make 10X working for someone who makes 10X (eg, very common situation in finance) vs making 1X sitting next to someone who also makes 1X (eg, DMV)

I get what you are talking about, but it's your choice to obsess more about what the other guy's getting rather than what you are.

Sounds like a personal problem?

So what about when two people have the same title, and tenure but one makes $50k more per year?

This is a similar situation and is happening at many companies. I know I make more than some peers that have higher job levels(and tenure in company) then I do.

> So what about when two people have the same title, and tenure but one makes $50k more per year?

Strangely enough that's a lot less viscerally unpleasant - perhaps because money is quite abstract (and you never actually see person A get a bigger pile than person B, whereas you notice immediately if there's a team pizza that person B isn't allowed to eat), perhaps because it's understandable that companies want to pay some people more and others less, whereas limiting who gets cheap perks feels like it's just nastiness.