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Comment by RONROC | Hacker News Reader

>Should my salary as a dev be a function of what a janitor makes?

Should definitely not be more than FIVE times what he makes. Because you're not 5x smarter, efficient, or important as FIVE (5) janitors. Period.

And if you think you are and you're using the "free market" as a factor, well then I'm sure you think BTC should of ever been worth 60k or that Tesla should be worth $900 a share.

It's incredible that people plant their morality within the confines of a "definitely rational market that's definitely not experiencing a bubble".

You're entitled to your opinion, and by all means share it—but in my earnest (peasant, non-leet) opinion, I think I can draw a straighter, truer, more direct corollary from a persons idea of what fair is (no matter how opaque) than I can from whatever bullshit he types in as a reply.

Agree to definitely disagree. No apologies.

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> Should definitely not be more than FIVE times what he makes. Because you're not 5x smarter, efficient, or important as FIVE (5) janitors. Period.

Again, it doesn't matter if I'm smarter, more efficient, or "more important" than 5 janitors; what matters is how much money I can help the company make and how hard I am to replace. If I'm enabling the company to make 10X more money than the efforts of a janitor could yield and I'm very hard to replace, then I see no reason why I shouldn't be paid more than 5 janitors combined (granted, this isn't a great comparison because a janitor is more of a cost center, but you get the point). It has nothing to do with who the janitors are as people or who I am as a person, it's purely about money. Also where did you get the number 5 from? Why not 6 or 4? This is what I mean when I say this is very arbitrary.

> but in my earnest (peasant, non-leet) opinion, I think I can draw a straighter, truer, more direct corollary from a persons idea of what fair is (no matter how opaque) than I can from whatever bullshit he types in as a reply.

You seem to believe that companies exist to provide good paying, "fair" jobs, when infact they exist solely to make money. People are paid based on their ability to contribute to this, full stop.

Hahaha, of course you don't see that. You're talents are rarified and frozen in amber (you work in an opaque, cut throat, morally bankrupt industry that headhunts just for the sake of taking talent off the market).

I 100% agree that's it's arbitrary, and my figure wasn't a source of categorical, universal truth, but guess what? The hardest questions in life resides squarely in a GREY area.

I'd even argue that your intense rationality and reliance on systems (no matter how ineffective, or even untrue) is a crutch because, in theory, you will always be at odds with the proletariat.

And what good is that?

Ah yes, I am a dirty member of the bourgeoisie who needs to be shot in the square by the true patriots such as yourself!

How are you defining the proletariat in this sense? It seems to me that both the janitor and the OP are trading labor for wages.

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