> One lead engineer is worth three junior engineer at least. Far more, I'd say. Fresh graduates and juniors are often held to almost no production bars at all.

> One lead engineer is worth three junior engineer at least. Far more, I'd say. Fresh graduates and juniors are often held to almost no production bars at all. In many startups, you could be a junior for a year, accomplish very little, yet be in no danger of failing any performance metrics. Before I left the startup world behind, I observed that seniors were often held responsible to 95% of the production that was happening at their startup. You'd expect them to be paid x10-20 times as much as juniors, but instead it's typically no more than x1.3-1.4. So as a senior engineer with a track record of shipped projects, I get to work harder than all juniors, be held to x20 their performance metrics, and for that I get 30% better pay? No wonder every single senior engineer I know has a "FAANG or bust" attitude nowadays.