[lbriner]

Can it be true though, except in very extreme/niche circumstances, that there are really people who are $200K+ better than other devs? I can't really imagine what that level of dev can do much more than those I have worked with who are only paid $50-100K

I wonder if the perception is distorted by FANNG companies who can afford to simply pay whatever i.e. another 100K for perhaps 10% better candidate just to make sure they get the best? In most of the companies I have worked for, even though a dev can add a lot of content that gets sold to customers, the company still have to pay for all the non-production staff and infrastructure.

[Kalium]

There are people with very specialized skills and experiences that it would cost half a million and years more to replicate. With that in mind, there are certainly devs $200k/yr more valuable than others.

This becomes even more important when a company is set up to be able to strongly leverage developer quality. When a developer being 10% better means millions more in revenue (or a similar decrease in costs), paying $100k more might make a lot of sense. How much would such an org be willing to pay for someone 30% better, do you think?

I know a developer who upon joining a company picked up a problem that had been considered intractable. Another developer had spent months on it before giving it up as impossible. My friend solved the issue, permanently, in three days. That's at least a 10x, and possibly a 30x, difference in productivity for a narrow set of tasks.

[skellera]

Having worked from small consulting shops up to big tech, there’s a pretty wide range in skill sets for devs.

Even big tech has shit engineers but it seems to have a higher percentage of good ones. They get paid more because of the impact of their work and how much the company values them.

A group of good engineers can make miracles happen. A team with one rockstar and some mediocre people are going to struggle to make the same impact. That’s why you pay to attract groups of good talent. It’s not about individual contribution but the work of the whole team.

[908B64B197]

> that there are really people who are $200K+ better than other devs? I can't really imagine what that level of dev can do much more than those I have worked with who are only paid $50-100K

The 10x myth is real. And having someone with 10x the productivity of another dev isn't a 10x increase in comp, more like 4-5x. So that's an incredible bargain for whoever is smart enough to see it.

I recall a story someone told me a while ago. Software business that did local CoL/prevailing wages. Hired an intern one summer that was just running around in circles around the other, more senior devs. Next summer they tried to get him back but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. Of course, he wouldn't return. That's when they realized a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to them; they lucked out hiring him that summer but there was no chance they could attract someone like him full time.

> I wonder if the perception is distorted by FANNG companies who can afford to simply pay whatever i.e. another 100K for perhaps 10% better candidate just to make sure they get the best?

This has compounding effects. One overachiever stuck with mediocre devs won't be able to do much. But a team of overachievers will ship products like the iPhone. Paying extra for the later make sense if your business model is to ship innovation.