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Good CEOs in good companies makes much more than the average CEOs in average companies. Every company in the USA wants a good CEO. But there are only very limi

Good CEOs in good companies makes much more than the average CEOs in average companies. Every company in the USA wants a good CEO. But there are only very limited number of CEOs in the USA that has a good track record of running a successful company. So companies are willing to pay more and more for the top CEOs. It's the same reason why drivers are paid very low. If there were only 100 drivers in SF who were capable of taking you from point A to point B with a reasonable amount of certainty they would be also be paid in millions. Everything is supply and demand. In case of SanFrancisco, the supply of good engineers that are available to be hired used to be limited compared to the demand. Once you remove the restriction of being able to be physically present in SF, the supply increases much more than the demand. Which results in the reduction of salaries.

ryandrake 6y ago
> In case of SanFrancisco, the supply of good engineers that are available to be hired used to be limited compared to the demand. If this were the case, salaries would rise until the supply equaled demand. People have been calling this "shortage of engineers" for decades. A shortage means that demand exceeds supply at a given price (salary). If the market were free to adjust there can't be a long-term shortage. Salaries would quickly rise to the point where supply and demand were equal. If there is really a persistent shortage, why hasn't this happened? When you talk about goods, long-term shortages can happen when either the supply is artificially constrained or there are some kind of price controls in effect. Which one is causing this shortage? There is no labor cartel in software. Nothing like the AMA keeping the supply of doctors limited. Anyone can learn from online sources and become proficient, and universities graduate truckloads of developers. So there's no artificial labor constraint. There is also no externally-mandated maximum salary for developers. So how can there be a long-term shortage?

ryandrake 6y ago

> In case of SanFrancisco, the supply of good engineers that are available to be hired used to be limited compared to the demand. If this were the case, salaries would rise until the supply equaled demand. People have been calling this "shortage of engineers" for decades. A shortage means that demand exceeds supply at a given price (salary). If the market were free to adjust there can't be a long-term shortage. Salaries would quickly rise to the point where supply and demand were equal. If there is really a persistent shortage, why hasn't this happened? When you talk about goods, long-term shortages can happen when either the supply is artificially constrained or there are some kind of price controls in effect. Which one is causing this shortage? There is no labor cartel in software. Nothing like the AMA keeping the supply of doctors limited. Anyone can learn from online sources and become proficient, and universities graduate truckloads of developers. So there's no artificial labor constraint. There is also no externally-mandated maximum salary for developers. So how can there be a long-term shortage?