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by hangonhn 1223 days ago
> There is no evidence that management problems are harder to solve than coding problems.

I think that's the sort of thinking some forms of schooling drill into our heads: harder problems = greater reward/value.

That's not really how it is. We get rewarded for the value we supposedly generate by solving some problem or at least some portion of that value is rewarded to us. So if there are some low hanging fruits that generate a ton of value, then that's how you will be rewarded. I'm sure Ph.D.s solve far harder problems than me all day long but societally we don't tend to value many of those problems or their solutions.

1 comments

> We get rewarded for the value we supposedly generate by solving some problem or at least some portion of that value is rewarded to us.

And that's the sort of thinking other forms of schooling drill into our heads: value generated ~= value compensated.

That's not really how it is. We get rewarded for the position we are at in the class hierarchy. If you're "in charge of" someone, you have to be making more money than them.

Is that how it should be? No. It's very much not. But it's largely how it is.

Totally agree with you. I think your point and the one I made earlier are at least two of the naive beliefs often held by a lot of engineers in tech -- myself included. The really pernicious part is that the value generated by engineers are sometimes quite big and the reward they get is a small fraction of it but big enough to make the engineer happy that they never stop to ask for more or find a better deal.