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> Couldn't agree more. Basically your current employer should really pay you what the salary you would get somewhere else plus an additional markup for the internal knowledge which you have already acquired (you should put a value on that as well).

This works both ways.

The value of internal knowledge helps both parties, because as an employee you dont know if x other company is good to work at, or that you would like the responsibilities there, etc. The fact that lots of people stay with a lower salary in a job is a testament that it is often the employees that choose to pay that fee.

The company is frequently interviewing. So if the company finds a candidate that would work for less (minus the internal knowledge comission) it should fire you and replace you!

This doesn't go bothways, because there's either more demand for developers than supply or more supply than demand. Currently we live in a time where there is more demand than supply, hence why developers get treated relatively well in comparison to other professions. There's a reason why developers get ping pong tables but not accountants.

So the fact that "company is frequently interviewing" only shows how much demand there is and how hard it is to fill a position with the right person. Once you have the right people on board, they can ask a lot more than what they get, because replacing them can be significantly more time and resource/money consuming and then it's not even guaranteed that they will be as good as the ones you have right now.

This is basic free market, the side of it which has the upper hand right now needs to play its cards to max out wealth and every employee should be encouraged to do so, because it will overall only increase economic growth. It doesn't always has to come from business growth, if workers can gain significant wealth based on the same principle then they should, because it will only increase more spending and investment of those people into new areas again.

Devs get ping-pong tables because they can be bought off in other ways besides money because they are naive.

I loved your comment about "max out wealth" because that is the underlying truth to all of this--you get maybe 30 years to make as much money as possible and that's it!

Agreed, this is really the best summary "you get maybe 30 years to make as much money as possible and that's it"

And if you think about it, moving every 2 years is 15 different companies. If you stay a bit longer at the ones you like, say 5 years, then that's 6 companies in your employable lifetime. To put it another way you have 5-10 big projects that you can do in your (employable) life. (I think Jeff Atwood said something like that before).

This is of course for people that value what they do at work and want to make meaningful impact professionally in their lives. For other people family is much more important so it doesn't matter if they don't min/max the projects they work on.

> The fact that lots of people stay with a lower salary in a job is a testament that it is often the employees that choose to pay that fee.

That employees "pay that fee" doesn't indicate why. It also doesn't provide insight into whether it makes economic sense for them to do so.

As the line manager is employee herself, the strategy only works, if she is applying it herself, too. Otherwise her salary might not be competitive and you as her sub-employee are risking the most severe of all offenses - asking for more than what your supervisor makes.

In technical fields it's not uncommon for supervisors to earn less than those whose authority otherwise ranks below them.

It is basically just a question of market forces. If a particular position is sufficiently specialised when the supervisor role is more generalised then you might expect to pay the specialty more than the generalised role - even though the generalised role is more senior.

> as her sub-employee are risking the most severe of all offenses - asking for more than what your supervisor makes.

This is a flawed philosophy. As a manager I have had a few critical pulling in higher salaries than my own. If you are a superviser who is artificially holding an employee back from reaching their full potential (seeking compensation that matches the demand person's talent in the open market) than you are doing your company (yourself) and that employee a major disservice.

Just because you are a manager doesn't mean you can do what your employee does (and vice versa). Artificially holding a sub-employee back is a sign of fear for one's own ineptitude.

you are argumenting from an optimal-employee-perspective or what you might choose to call it. Fact is - even supervisors are humans and 90% of them will be hesitant to have somebody "under" them while making more or as much money. I fear that's just a fact.

It's true that some supervisors operate in this manner (i.e. oppressing employees based on their own compensation), but those are egregiously sub-optimal supervisors indeed.

Can you provide a source for your "90%" assertion, please?

I disagree based on personal experience. I am currently a line manager who is a developer himself and manages 5 other developers and my salary is not the highest and I have absolutely no issue with that. One of the devs has been with the company for 8+ years, has knowledge of literally every corner of the software and has a great work attitude which adds a lot of value by helping other devs to become as productive as possible. This person earns a lot more than me and I have no issue with that, because as a line manager I am more afraid to lose this person than anything else.

EDIT: My main responsibility is to keep the team happy and productive. If this developer would leave the team our productivity would drop and we wouldn't achieve our goals we set for ourselves this year. It would have a direct impact on my bonus as well and it is in my highest interest to keep great people at every possible cost. If I think I don't earn enough then I will have that chat with my line manager, but I will never try to destroy my team based on some personal ego crap.

Agreed. But I think that's why encouraging a servant leadership model in your company is beneficial.

Which is better for the company? (A) Leader acts in such a way to make him or herself 150% effective, or (B) Leader acts in such a way as to make all of his or her direct reports 115% effective?

If a leader can't make their team more effective, then why have them in leadership?

(Edit: Essentially, what dustinmoris said!)

Even if they are accepting of you earning more, their own boss and/or Human Resources may well have a different opinion. Woe unto those whose supervisors are also underpaid.

The markup doesn't necessarily make sense, unconditionally, because there's also the your own adaptations to the company to consider. If their environment makes you reasonably comfortable, that's a risk mitigation versus other jobs that's worth something to most people.

Also, few people are truly indispensable. In all my time working, I've never seen a company fall apart from the loss of one important person. In fact, it usually takes a shorter time to cope than anyone anticipates.

I do agree with you, In the sense that as an employee, you're in great shape if you're seen at being essential, to some degree; I just don't think you're capturing the entire market dynamic.

It's possible to be more valuable to another company. I had a developer ask me for more money and I was just honest, if he likes working here he can stay because he was a good developer but he would undoubtedly earn more elsewhere. He just wasn't valuable to me because I had to be more involved in is projects, going to meetings with him for example. He was a great developer, but the climate of my company was a smaller company with strong personalities at the mid-level for the groups we worked with, if you weren't confident you got destroyed. He ended up getting a much higher offer, tried negotiating a small raise (especially compared to his offer, he still would have been at least 30% below that offer) and he just literally was not worth another penny to me but I know he's doing really well at his new company.

I love how you whitewashed the "strong personalities" bit--yeah, those people are assholes who mistreated the developers. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.