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Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

It certainly isn't the only way to keep developers, but I don't see how it's unsustainable. The nature of software development is such that huge margins are possible, and the productivity of a really good Engineer is that of many, many mediocre Engineers.

I remember last time I was working for a large corp, there was this one guy on the team who was really, incredibly good. Easily worth 5x me, in terms of work done. He made 20% more than I did. There was another guy who was probably closer to 1/5th my productivity. He made maybe 20% less than I did.

the thing is, determining productivity is difficult; but I think even allowing for a high margin of error, you could sustainably target only the best, and pay twice what the competition does.

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What I meant by unsustainable is that I feel the retaining talent problem is less related to money. My guess is smart people are leaving mostly because of the environment and not because of pay and benefits. When those smart people leave, theoretically the quality of the product suffers and overtime the competitor with better people wins. If MS profits go down over time, and investing in things like Azure and Bing and Entertainment (all which loose money), I don't see how they can continue to throw money at the talent problem. But man if I could get paid more AND work in a better environment (one where I had an impact) I would go for it in a heart beat. So in that sense money DOES matter. I agree with the rest of what you said though about it being difficult to measure.

This is what I think of when the subject is talented people leaving MS: http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2008/12/Key_data_center_arc...

http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2009/06/james-whittaker-jo...

I think Amazon and Google are better because of it.

I agree with you that money isn't everything, and money, if it's just a little, like 10% or something probably doesn't matter much at all for the vast majority of the people.

I do wonder, though, what would happen if microsoft decided to start offering top search engineers from google twice what they are currently getting.

I think they would stay at Google (in its current state). Google is getting big but is still not as big as Microsoft (political). Google has more data (I would imagine that is something search folks want more of). Google seems to be the best environment for top search engineers for a variety of reason. My guess is that the top search folks (along with others in the top of their field) get to choose where they work and what they get paid because they are at the top of their game. So if Microsoft is where they wanted to be they would already be here. If it is where they want to be and they are not shame on us for not recognizing that.

maybe you are right; but personally, one of the big reasons I started my own business was that I saw really, really good people only made 20%-50% more than absolute mediocres, when they were 10-20 times more productive.

If it were possible to make big bucks without starting your own company would I have continued to work for others? maybe.

The thing is, some people say "Once I have enough, it doesn't matter" and certainly, the $100K/year that your average bay area computer person makes is 'enough' to live on... but double that and you will be able to retire in less than half the time. Retire and work on your own terms, if you like.

For me, that is what getting more money is about. I don't really care about having a nicer car or anything, but it sure would be nice to be able to, say, take a year off and travel, and not worry about what employers would think about the year-long gap in my resume.

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