One reason I'd say is because there's an at best weak relationship between "hard" and "well-paid". Coca Cola has a larger market cap than Pfizer. mRNA vaccines

One reason I'd say is because there's an at best weak relationship between "hard" and "well-paid". Coca Cola has a larger market cap than Pfizer. mRNA vaccines are definitely a lot harder to make than sugar water. At an individual level sales people are often paid more than the engineers in the org, despite the latter doing much more complex work and having specialized training.