You're not working for "less than what someone thinks your worth", you're working for a price set by the market and an assessment of what level of quality your work is.

A developer gets paid before the salespeople have anything to sell. It's up to the company and its salespeople to try to not lose money on their deal with their R&D people. Considering the context of the article (Google engineer) and how much people in that market get paid, making money after you pay them is a tall order. Most businesses fail.