4 ms·

I believe this has something to do with the statistical distribution of compensation - normal-like for electricians, dentists, and more power-like for coders an

• ghaff 5y ago
  It's all about leverage. There are certainly less good and better electricians and dentists, but at the end of the day they can only string so much wire and drill so many teeth in a day at rates that are pretty much set by the market. They have some leverage if they set up a business and employ people but there are still both lower and upper bounds. Whereas a Pro Bowl quarterback or A-list movie star is worth maybe $100s of millions to a team or studio relative to players/actors who are "only" very competent. Coders are somewhere in between.
  • analog31 5y ago
    People run out of teeth, there is no limit to code. And if your dentist runs late you don't hire three dentists to make them run even later.
• hnfong 5y ago
  Compensation for coders is probably closer to normal distribution than power. Otherwise the stuff on glassdoor/levels.fyi won't make sense. Productivity (or impact of code written) though, it might as well be closer to the power law distribution