The thing is none of the coders at old job were needed in customer interaction. Think it was more of eye candy, cool guy to have around, founder had common hobbies like football etc.
Not saying they were needed, however your old employer still might have had a couple of boxes that said "can be presented to investors?" "can be used for pre-sale?" which the hire manager had to tick off at the time they hired them.
Many people at the end tend to do other things than the basis they were hired on, how many times have you seen some "X guru" or "Y expert" and "Z evangelist" being hired at a premium only to end up doing the same crap as everyone else once that specific project fell through?
Salaries can be quite "arbitrary" mostly because that while there is some fine tuned formula behind it on many occasions it doesn't really survives it's with meeting reality, the more traditional "old school" enterprises are probably the best at actually maintaining some logical relationship between experience, responsibilities and salary while the newer tech companies tend to be more erratic and considerably dislike rocking the boat even in cases when an employee does no longer deserve their initial starting salary.
Many people at the end tend to do other things than the basis they were hired on, how many times have you seen some "X guru" or "Y expert" and "Z evangelist" being hired at a premium only to end up doing the same crap as everyone else once that specific project fell through?
Salaries can be quite "arbitrary" mostly because that while there is some fine tuned formula behind it on many occasions it doesn't really survives it's with meeting reality, the more traditional "old school" enterprises are probably the best at actually maintaining some logical relationship between experience, responsibilities and salary while the newer tech companies tend to be more erratic and considerably dislike rocking the boat even in cases when an employee does no longer deserve their initial starting salary.