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Not really, no. The value of your contribution over the person next to you is marginal at best after a certain point. Even if you are say 50% more efficient tha

Not really, no. The value of your contribution over the person next to you is marginal at best after a certain point. Even if you are say 50% more efficient than the next engineer. You will still be less valuable than someone who operates as a force multiplier improving the efficiency of 8 engineers by 15%. Now, don't get me wrong I love having doers on my team but when the rubber meets the road I'll reward the folks who lift all boats first. Especially with the rate of turnover these days, having someone who can rapidly onboard and get engineers up and running can make huge difference and if you are working on basic B2B SAAS stuff on standard languages, there are tons of good mid-levels out there. If you shift into niche languages or are doing something complex the equation is likely to change.

Viliam1234 4y ago
> The value of your contribution over the person next to you is marginal at best after a certain point. Even if you are say 50% more efficient than the next engineer. You will still be less valuable than someone who operates as a force multiplier improving the efficiency of 8 engineers by 15%. If someone is 50% more efficient than someone else, I would naively think it makes sense to pay them 50% more... without requiring them to also become a part-time manager. If it isn't so, then it naively seems to me that junior developers are overpaid, and senior developers are relatively underpaid. Improve your productivity by 100%, and get a 10% raise (or a 30% raise but you also get extra duties). Some companies simply do not hire junior developers, which seems like they agree with me. And the companies that hire juniors, are probably doing it out of desperation (because seniors are not available at the moment), or because they expect that most of those juniors will forget to negotiate for a higher salary when their productivity multiplies a few years later. Would you hire junior developers if you knew with 100% certainty that after 1 year all of them will leave in order to get a market-level salary for their gained experience?

Viliam1234 4y ago

> The value of your contribution over the person next to you is marginal at best after a certain point. Even if you are say 50% more efficient than the next engineer. You will still be less valuable than someone who operates as a force multiplier improving the efficiency of 8 engineers by 15%. If someone is 50% more efficient than someone else, I would naively think it makes sense to pay them 50% more... without requiring them to also become a part-time manager. If it isn't so, then it naively seems to me that junior developers are overpaid, and senior developers are relatively underpaid. Improve your productivity by 100%, and get a 10% raise (or a 30% raise but you also get extra duties). Some companies simply do not hire junior developers, which seems like they agree with me. And the companies that hire juniors, are probably doing it out of desperation (because seniors are not available at the moment), or because they expect that most of those juniors will forget to negotiate for a higher salary when their productivity multiplies a few years later. Would you hire junior developers if you knew with 100% certainty that after 1 year all of them will leave in order to get a market-level salary for their gained experience?