I agree with the OP that the problem here is that it is not easy to measure productivity.
http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-02-1...
I make no claims as to how useful these definitions are. There's a reason why economics is called the dismal science. But terms like output and productivity do have accepted definitions - so yeah, the true measure of an employee's productivity is almost their salary. (It's actually revenue / employee / hour, so if an employer keeps most of the money as profit, it's still productivity. That's why the grandparent suggested "start your own consultancy".)
The only way there is something to discuss is when we presume there is another measure of programmer productivity and then ask why the marketplace is so inefficient that economic productivity does not correlate with programmer productivity.
I think that there's a more interesting question in the article - why do salaries "flatten out" the productivity curve, so that programmers who would easily be making 100x more as startup founders are instead making 50% more, with the balance going to the employer? After all, if we measure by revenue generated for the employer, I'm in at least the 7 figures, within an order of magnitude. And I doubt Aaron etc. were making all that much in salary when they were Google employees either.
I suspect the answer to this has to do with risk allocation. Because technology markets tend to be winner-take-all, there's a lot of variance in productivity that's not the result of the coder's actions. In other words, it comes down to luck, being in the right market with the right product. You can work hard at the wrong thing and still produce nothing of value, despite being smart and dedicated.
When you sign on as an employee, your employer agrees to take on the risk that you'll work hard and still nothing will come of it. And in return, they get nearly all of the upside if your hard work does result in something great.
I suspect that the 10x more productive figure is a result of sample bias: when you look at what people have done, there are some folks whose projects were 10x more useful than what other people have done. All the people who worked equally hard and produced equally large amounts of code are lumped into the "not productive" category, because in hindsight, their projects weren't all that useful. If you try to predict, a priori, who the 10x coders are, I bet you'll have a much harder time. If you don't, you have a sterling future ahead of you as a venture capitalist.
Networking, for instance, can greatly increase your output if you choose an awesome cofounder. It has a benefit that is not easily defined because of how hard it is to decouple the work and effect of each individual team member.
I know of one person that is worth easily in the 8 figures range, but he got in early to the venture. This does not mean he's a better programmer than everyone else, but he does benefit from a lot of factors that sum to being more important than programming skills.
Yes. An Indian programmer could earn (say) $15k at home, 40k if she goes to Japan, and 80k in Silicon Valley. All doing the "same" job.
This does mean that you end up with employees who are clearly superior getting paid less than some of their inferior peers. Certainly when I was a mere employee the idea that I was working harder and better than someone who got paid twice my salary was galling. But there are plenty of employees who aren't as concerned about what their peers are getting paid. Most of the time, assuming your salaries are relatively generous, I've learned that employees feel they are personally being rewarded sufficiently, and that's what matters to them. For those who make it more of an issue, you try to accommodate them if they're worth it.
That said, it is really important to reward superstars to keep them really happy. Often, this means salary / bonuses, but sometimes it means type of work and the role they get to play on the project.
Is an architecture astronaut really more productive than a programmer just because there is some sort of perceived value within an "Enterprise Environment?" Is a programmer who switches jobs every few years--garnering a raise each time but needing a ramp-up period at each job--more productive than the one who values security more than money and stays in one place?
I don't think that when we use the phrase "programmer productivity" on HN we are talking about the same thing as an economist who talks about productivity.
--Bill Gates.
My favourite consequence of measuring productivity by the line is to ask how much I owe my employer when I spend a day eliminating redundancy and thus contribute negative lines of code.