Re:Why don't companies pay 50x engineers 50x?
by JohnFen on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @12:40PM
(#44445815)
The sports star analogy falls short in one important way:
> But if salaries are a reflection of athletes’ contributions, why isn’t the distribution of software developers’ salaries look like athletes’?
This misinterprets what contributions are being rewarded -- it's not directly their skill as an athlete, it's their "star power". It's their individual ability to drive very large increases in revenue.
With a tiny handful of exceptions, no devs have such "star power". The general public aren't driven to spend on software just because some specific dev (however skilled they may be) worked on it, so such compensation is not much of a thing like it can be in sports.
> But if salaries are a reflection of athletes’ contributions, why isn’t the distribution of software developers’ salaries look like athletes’?
This misinterprets what contributions are being rewarded -- it's not directly their skill as an athlete, it's their "star power". It's their individual ability to drive very large increases in revenue.
With a tiny handful of exceptions, no devs have such "star power". The general public aren't driven to spend on software just because some specific dev (however skilled they may be) worked on it, so such compensation is not much of a thing like it can be in sports.