[willdearden]

The author misunderstands risk premium, which is the extra reward the market offers in expected value to induce you to take a risky proposition over a certainty equivalent.

I think programmers’ salaries are weighed down by risk aversion. It’s tough to measure marginal impact, you don’t know want to be punished for being placed on a less productive team, etc. So salary is some function of your expected marginal productivity on an average team but scaled down by a risk premium. If you don’t want to pay this risk premium, trading is an option.