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by rufus_foreman 458 days ago
>> We literally earn $1,000,000 for every $100,000 developer salary.

Start your own company, hire the developers for $200,000, double their income and get rich.

3 comments

> Start your own company

Okay, that seems easy enough and affordable with most tech salaries.

> hire the developers for $200,000

And you've just applied an unspoken filter. What founder can afford paying someone $200k a year, let alone multiple people? So that means you need to either be filthy rich already or to get investors - who will likely have very strong opinions about whether you should be paying devs double their market rate even if you still make a profit.

Not to mention that this assumes "your own company" can earn $1,000,000 for every developer it employs. Because "your own company" likely has a completely different value proposition, different customers and different tech.

The profit (read: surplus value not paid out to employees) of a company doesn't directly translate to market success or competiveness, but it can affect factors that do (e.g. availability of investments, bank loans, etc). It's not necessary to exploit your workers to operate a sustainable business, it's just very difficult to compete with companies that do because they can tap into those profits to cut you off (e.g. by cutting prices below cost) or leapfrog you (e.g. by acquisitions or hiring more people).

The existence of a company willing to pay its employees 2x the market rate doesn't impact the ability of other companies to hire enough sufficiently talented people at or below market rate to squash that company if it is small enough. "We live in a society" - or in a market in this case. The market wasn't created yesterday so if you join it today, you're starting at a disadvantage, not an equal level playing field.

Funny how competition and a free market makes it all possible
Tech CEOs will do anything to reach FAANG market caps and revenue except pay FAANG-level salaries.