[intev]

I actually very specifically chose the butcher example, and no there isn't. At the end of the day, a butcher, like a software developer can be trained to be good. Initially a butcher would ruin meat and cut into profits by incorrectly making cuts. Over time the butcher can and will get better. Far fewer mistakes towards the end of the career. Same with software engineers. After a point this comparison breaks down, but at least up to here it's comparable. Self taught or not, many educators have proven that good engineering can be taught and practiced. Over time everyone gets better if they care enough. Not everyone can be Donald Knuth, but no one's looking for Donald. Most start up founders just want competent engineers.

Moving on to your second point about entitlement. Of course the founder is entitled to 50x the payout. You seem to be severely discounting risk. Did you see this founder's list of other failures?[1] They can pay themselves whatever they feel is right. They took the risk, failed multiple times, and finally got lucky. Of course they can reward themselves how they see fit. There are so many founders who never see the reward and end up with worse careers because they only kept founding companies rather than choosing a "stable" career. To me it seems like, in your view, the guy who didn't take the risk founding companies and got to join a "sure" job by joining a rapidly growing startup gets to be rewarded comparably to the guy who started something, working, spending years not sure where it was going to go. Why would anyone take the risk of starting a company? I'd rather join a fast growing startup if my reward is quite comparable to the founder's. Low risk, high reward.

[1] https://joshpigford.com/projects

[falcolas]

If Google can reward a cook, why can't a meat processing plant reward a butcher? Masters at their craft deserve to be rewarded when businessmen rely upon them to succeed.

[kjksf]

Google can reward employees because they make monster profits.

If you can, you should get a job at Google and get a great salary (which is still a tiny sliver of Google's monster profits).

If you can't then you have to settle for lower paying job at a company that doesn't have monster profits like Google and therefore cannot pay you outsized salary.

Employees don't "deserve" anything other than the market salary.

It goes both ways. Employers don't "deserve" Google-level programmers for half the salary that Google is willing to pay. And I'm sure they would love to get great talent at reduced prices just like you would love to get great salary regardless of your talent and contribution to the business.

The market salary happens when both parties work to advance their self interest. "deserving" has nothing to do with it.