[ceeplusplus]

But do high productivity / high demand employees earn outsized compensation? Software engineers at Uber, for example, earn probably 10x what drivers make. If you look at some of the recent ridesharing coop attempts in the US, they advertise wages of 70-80k for devs, which is just not going to work in a competitive market.

[kqr]

Generally you won't find investors pouring millions into co-op because investors do this in expectation of ownership and control -- the opposite of what they get in a co-op. So it's harder for a co-op to raise the ridiculous amounts of money they need to pay outsized compensation.

Instead, part of the compensation package is to not be beholden to corporate overlords and quarterly report-driven shareholder value-based crap. I'm absolutely willing to take a financial pay cut for that.

[ceeplusplus]

I'd say the number of people willing to take a 5x paycut (it is literally 5x) for feeling better about themselves is pretty small. The number of those people who are qualified to work on matching algorithms and pricing algorithms is even smaller. And you need matching and pricing algorithms to compete against Uber and Lyft, because they can price discriminate (e.g. airport rides) against consumers and get better utilization out of drivers, so if they have to compete, they can pay drivers more than you.

[sangnoir]

> I'd say the number of people willing to take a 5x paycut (it is literally 5x) for feeling better about themselves is pretty small

What do you suppose is the median salary for devs in the US? Tech salaries are increasingly bimodal, take care not to be deceived by big tech/bay area salaries.

[ceeplusplus]

Sure, but then you are hiring less skilled talent that is probably incapable of working on pricing and matching algorithms (which along with scale are the real advantage Uber has, since everyone can make a crappy iOS app and call it a day).

If the algorithms didn't matter then Uber wouldn't be maintaining 70% marketshare in the US.

Also, a quick look at levels.fyi says salary at IBM (i.e. your median salary dev) for a senior is 192k. Compared to 80k for a ridesharing coop, that's still quite the salary cut. Don't forget a lot of these coops are based in HCOL areas like NYC.

[sangnoir]

> Sure, but then you are hiring less skilled talent that is probably incapable of working on pricing and matching algorithms

This sounds like a variation of the just world fallacy to me: in a just world, talented folk who solve hard problems get paid more, and the less talented ones - who are unable to solve hairy problems - get paid less. In such a world, you can identify the talented ones by how much they are earning. Yet in the real world, geography, and luck/ability to bootstrap to HCOL areas plays a huge part

> Also, a quick look at levels.fyi says salary at IBM (i.e. your median salary dev) for a senior is 192k.

I think you're underestimating how wide the gap is between the bimodal peaks. $192 is too high[2] still; it slots just below Senior executive average ($200k) and right above EM ($180k) in the 2022 StackOverflow salary survey[1] for the US

1. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#work-salary

2. the survey doesn't distinguish between junior & senior engineers, but I'm guessing even the seniors earn less than CxO's.

[ceeplusplus]

Your survey seems very flawed. It puts an average SRE at 175k yet the CxO's only make 200k. Are you sure you're not excluding stock based comp in those numbers?

In any case, even if you go by the data in your survey, a machine learning specialist is supposed to make 150k and a mobile developer 144k. Those are still a lot more than 70-80k.

> Yet in the real world, geography, and luck/ability to bootstrap to HCOL areas plays a huge part

Considering the bar to get into a FAANG is just 4-5 leetcode medium-hard questions, I think there is little gatekeeping happening. This isn't investment banking where if you don't go to an Ivy you can't get in. And there are a lot more firms than FAANG paying big salaries.

> I think you're underestimating how wide the gap is between the bimodal peaks

IBM is your quintessential example of a consulting bodyshop. If anything, they would be at the lower bimodal peak, not the higher one.

[jack_pp]

Won't it work though? The market isn't full of rational salary optimizing actors, there are some (probably a small percentage) that care more about their work env and culture than salary. This might be either because they already feel they have enough money or simply hate the normal corporate culture.

[nine_k]

Ideally the pay cut would be smaller than he expense of buying antidepressants and regular therapist visits.

[jack_pp]

I don't know about you but I'd rather not spend years of my life sedated on drugs just for money. There are places to live outside the states that don't require you to make 100k per year to have a very good life.

[nine_k]

Exactly my point.

A soul-crushing job may be not worth it just from the financial perspective.

[sudosysgen]

That's 80k + a share, which may have a lot of value.

[jonas21]

Though you have to buy that share.

[msk-lywenn]

It’s usually progressively deduced from your salary, you don’t need to buy it upfront

[jonas21]

At least in this case, it sounds like you buy it upfront.

> Mondragon’s co-ops share the same detailed information with worker-owners, who buy into their co-ops by making one-time payments of roughly sixteen thousand euros in most co-ops.

[sangnoir]

I'm sure Mondragon's financing coöp will happily assist with funding a loan, underwritten by an insurance coöp and paid through the bank coöp. It's turtles^w coöps all the way down.