> engineers need their fair share. They are the one creating things, they are the one on the front line and we should not get satiated by the crumbles we are left with.
This, 10x and especially for programmers coming for 2nd/3rd world countries, whom are even more unaware of the value they're creating and settle with way less. Obviously, it's easy to say this and it often doesn't help you get your foot in the door when you ask for 3x the average dev salary around you at an interview. Key is to keep re-negotiating after you've proven your value, then iterate until you get the slice you deserve. For a company it's really painful to lose an employee who is already performing well, they'll likely give up on the margin to keep you on.
We used to joke that people with naïve pictures of Africa in their heads, expected to see wild life immediately after stepping off the plane. I believe the image you have is somewhat more nuanced, but still could do with some work. We are very aware we are generating value which we are not capturing. I've heard AWS CT devs complaining about receiving less than half the total comp as their US peers. We just don't have much leverage.
This, 10x and especially for programmers coming for 2nd/3rd world countries, whom are even more unaware of the value they're creating and settle with way less. Obviously, it's easy to say this and it often doesn't help you get your foot in the door when you ask for 3x the average dev salary around you at an interview. Key is to keep re-negotiating after you've proven your value, then iterate until you get the slice you deserve. For a company it's really painful to lose an employee who is already performing well, they'll likely give up on the margin to keep you on.