It's the same reason you pay a surgeon a lot of money. Sure, 80% of the time their job is somewhat cookie cutter, and maybe even a med student could do it. it

It's the same reason you pay a surgeon a lot of money. Sure, 80% of the time their job is somewhat cookie cutter, and maybe even a med student could do it. it's the 20% of the time when things get tricky that you really want an experienced surgeon, or in the case of building software that a million dollar(or billion dollar) company relies you, that you want a superstar engineer to handle . When a junior developer is given a module to write, he may or may not screw that up to some degree. Worst case scenario if he does though, is needing to fix/debug that module. When a senior engineer screws up core architecture/engine code...the whole project is in turmoil until it gets fixed.