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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I didn’t say deserve - but since switching jobs is a chore, I’d want to be compensated for it. I don’t think it’s a job that should necessarily make me very rich though. Taking risk should, but just creating value that someone else can produce? There is talent scarcity but not that much scarcity. Other people would do my job at my pay (which I guess ties into the topic!)

With the highest salaries perhaps 20-40% higher than mine and marginal tax 50% making that 10-20%, the prospect is basically, would I switch jobs a few times for that little, when I like my situation?

If the ceiling was higher, I’d switch. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy :)

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I think there is a comparable amount of value created between you and someone in USA, its just that in Europe managers capture more % of the profit. Its not an issue of scarcity (that makes sens only for the whole playing ground) but of distribution after the scarcity is already priced in.

In some industries, developers create almost infinite value-per-person. A company can make a product with 100 people and sell it to amillion customers.

In other industries, engineers (software or not) just make products and products are built and sold with "normal" margins and limited growth opportuntites. A healthy company can make a 10% profit every year for a century. Scaling up means having more people because you need more sales, more manufacturing and so on.

In some more pure tech industries like SaaS, Games etc, the profit margins can be much higher. I'd be upset too if I was at a company that made $1M profit per employee and I didn't have a cut. That doesn't apply to most software jobs (at least not here) though.

Or perhaps everything is just cheaper in Europe. If customers get more for less, B2B must also be cheaper, and software is cheaper.

There doesn't have to be someone capturing profit if the whole industry is priced lower.

"Value created by you" is not necessarily dependent on your skills alone. You might be the best Java programmer in the world, but if you get hired to write some boring CRM system for internal use in a bank, then the value you created is limited by how much money said bank wants to burn on internal development efforts.

On the other hand, if you get hired by FAANG and work on the "next big thing", like, say, new operating system for smartphones, then the amount of money that can be made from it is virtually unlimited.

The difference between the US and Europe is mostly that: cool, product-focused jobs are all in America, Europe only has the boring, low-risk, low-reward ones. Europe needs to innovate more, that's it.

I kind of agree, but it isn't just that europe doesn't innovate, there is a lack of VC infrastructure and it's kind of antithetical to the managerial culture.

> You might be the best Java programmer in the world

This is also true in the opposite sense. A mediocre programmer at a bank or a high-profit company could still create a lot of value because of the surroundings or simply the industry. And they're probably compensated for that, at least in part.

Even more interesting – the cafeteria workers, cleaning staff, etc at those companies also produce more value than their colleagues in less fortunate companies/industries. But they're probably not compensated for it, because markets.

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