As a programmer-turned-CEO, I firmly subscribe to the Mythical Man Month's suggestion that your top engineers should be paid the same or more than your managers

As a programmer-turned-CEO, I firmly subscribe to the Mythical Man Month's suggestion that your top engineers should be paid the same or more than your managers. Otherwise (as MMM notes), the only career advancement available to your engineers is to move into management, and that's a waste of a great engineer, and a good way to wind up with a poor manager. Speaking from experience: being a CEO is something I've learned to do, being a programmer is something that I just am. The only reason I got into management is that the size of projects I wanted to tackle exceeded what I was capable of doing myself. Unless I wanted to work on other people's projects, it meant I needed to put together my own team. While I wouldn't want to encourage programmers to move into management as their only career path, I also wouldn't ever hire someone into management who didn't work their way up in the field. Understanding how to manage technical projects is often much easier for someone who actually knows how to implement a technical project. Apple was/is similar -- Bertrand Serlet (SVP of Software Engineering) wrote malloc, Avi Tevanian (SVP of Software Engineering, Chief Software Technology Officer) was one of the primary authors of Mach. In conclusion: programmers do not always get paid less than project managers or business analysts. If you feel that you're stuck earning less than you deserve, don't treat that as an axiom of the industry -- figure out how to move forward in your career, even if that means finding a company that sufficiently values senior engineering staff, or working to become a senior engineer.