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by Hermitian909 1093 days ago
Not to be facetious, what's the difference?

At the high end of the white collar market you're paid to deliver impact and your pay is determined by the quantity of the impact and how differentiated it is (no big bonuses for the guy who presses the "print a million dollars" button).
1 comments
esafak 1093 days ago
It's easier to prove you have a special skill. They pay you more because they can't hire a replacement. In the other case, you have to prove how much better you really are. Of course, the trouble with specialization is that the skills take time to acquire and can be commoditized or become obsolete with a paradigm shift. A more risky proposition in tech than, say, medicine.
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Hermitian909 1093 days ago
> They pay you more because they can't hire a replacement

Sounds like the skills aren't very differentiated. IME it's quite rare for a business to miss differentiation in business impact in an order of magnitude.

Going to your earlier question, the candidate in question has many skills but is not overly specialized. He commands that price because he can point at the right place in the stack and say "There's $10 million in savings here" when everyone else misses it or "Changing the architecture in this way lets us ship 6 months faster" and he is able to do this repeatedly.

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