[robbrown451]

It seems to me that the benefits of tabs tend to are reduced as storage becomes cheaper, as text editors get more powerful, and as various other tools becomes smarter.

So people sticking with tabs are more typically "old-school" and stubborn in all their approaches. And that can explain the pay difference.

[mjevans]

Tabs clearly indicate a specific level of indent.

Spaces may or may not be rendered to a specific width in different editors, and in fixed width editors are equivalent to 'pixel perfect' rendering; the difference between a dead tree rendering that is static and an electronic metadata included document.