> The two together have brought the company $3M in worth, minus $130k that they cost. Exactly how much esch contributed to the $2.8M is harder to say, but certa

> The two together have brought the company $3M in worth, minus $130k that they cost. Exactly how much esch contributed to the $2.8M is harder to say, but certainly each only contributed a portion of the $2.8M - even though the salesperson actually caused the revenue to flow in, they are not solely responsible; and neither is the programmer, even though they single-handedly created the product. This would be a rare occurrence, but let's run with it. I don't think anywhere I have alluded to anything which could be considered as making such judgement on whom is worth more but rather the idea that businesses are systems with many actors. But I think we are running around the obvious question, out of $2.8m, and ignoring any other costs and expenses like taxes for example (21% in the US), how much should the programmer get paid, how much should the sales person be paid? If I had a company and I had 1 person sewing t-shirts which sold for $5, and another person sewing the same amount of t-shirts, same skill level, same quality of work but they were supreme t-shirts selling for $38. Should I pay the second work many times more, since they make me 7+ times more doing the same job. I don't think the market would say I would. Unless you have a unique skill or go beyond the level of the second employee, the rate would be the same. Even your software selling for 3m is set by the market, you cannot stick a price on it and say it is worth 50m and it's worth 50m. The same argument goes for developers, it's a generic pool of skilled workers. While there maybe an argument for paying a high profit generating developer more, the majority of developers are likely to be the lower end. Maybe some people just get lucky, for example it is probably easier generating 1m of revenue working at Facebook (developer A), than it would be working at a small boutique development firm (developer B), developer A being no different than developer B, should developer A get paid more just because of the opportunity they have. > Well, a worker who, through their time and expertise, is adding $1M to the company's value is almost precisely equivalent to the investor investing $1M. However, you believe that the worker should get back 10% of what they invested, while the investor should get back 110% of what they invested. Do you see the double standard? There is no double standard, and they are not equivalent. The employee earns a salary, the invest earns via capital gains (excluding cases of dividends and profit shares). An investor can lose everything, while an employee gets paid. If you think an employee == investor then you should not expect a salary at all, you getting paid depends on whether the company makes a profit and if there are capital gains to be had. I think you should consider that employees are more like businesses, you are selling you product/services (aka skills) to a customer.