It's not always possible to quantify what $50k of work is though. In the original post jquery states that his work made the company $1m. What does that figure m

It's not always possible to quantify what $50k of work is though. In the original post jquery states that his work made the company $1m. What does that figure mean though? How much of that $1m does the infrastructure team deserve credit for? How much was down to the marketing team? How much to the fact that the company already had the contacts to sell the product to? How much to your boss and co-workers for guiding/helping you? Put another way, if he'd done the work, whatever it was, as an independent worker, how much profit would he have walked away with after a year? I imagine it probably wouldn't have been $1m. If it ended up being $50k then maybe the $50k he was paid was actually fair.