To add to this, I have friends who work in hedge funds and there, the salaries really are risk premiums. You can be very smart and capable, but have a bad year

To add to this, I have friends who work in hedge funds and there, the salaries really are risk premiums. You can be very smart and capable, but have a bad year due to luck and get fired. In my career as a software engineer, I've yet to see a great engineer get fired due to bad luck alone (not saying it doesn't happen, but not with the same frequency).