With the reliable incompetence of the average job, we shouldn't ever expect this kind of rational fair compensation. Really, we should be seeing truly talented people making an exodus away from what is called a socially appropriate job. Due to there being a gross monopoly, right now, on economic resources (led by the dictatorship of midwits).
What keeps a sufficiently paid high performer around, usually, is a personally rewarding and comfortable work environment. What that means can vary quite a lot though, making it hard to summarize in blogspam and short comments.
Set them on a task, give them a few constraints as needed, and act as a bulldozer to remove blockers as they come to you with them. That's roughly the management a high performer needs in my book. Make sure you listen to them when they complain about something, and fix it within reason. Or explain why you cannot. Don't let penny wise pound foolish stuff fester. Advocate for merit based raises and bonuses - they are making you look good so they should be your first priority when expending political capital. Make sure higher ups and the rest of the org knows about their accomplishments. Simple stuff!
So I'd say, pay us all what we are worth, and pay the high performers proportionally more.
In our specific industry, innumerable people are earning high compensation as part of companies and teams that have relatively little revenue (if any) and may very well collapse before turning a profit. Should they not be paid until their work actually makes some money? What if it doesn't?
"Worth" is pretty tricky in salaries, but tech workers happen to have very very little to complain about when it comes to compensation right now. The labor fight for them (us) is real but exists almost entirely on other fronts.
Just become a shareholder, share the upside and share the downside. Don't have the balls? Be an employee, get a nice risk-free sum every month and live a worry-free life.
(Yeah I know being an employee isn't entirely without worries, but it's nothing compared to being a founder/shareholder.)
I always forget that all people, regardless of their capital, can "just become a shareholder".
Can't do it? Then you have to share with sales, marketing, accounting, tax consultants, finance, auditors, lawyers, internal IT, HR, post-sales account managers, customer support, office managers, other engineers - and of course the people who keep it organized, and the people who took a risk and funded it. Seems fair to me.
Consider the opportunity cost of providing capital: if I invested my capital into NASDAQ100 accumulating ETF, I could reasonably expect 10-15% of yearly tax-free[0] profit stored in a safe asset that can be liquidated at any time. Potentially much more profit - last few years were great (20-40% p.a.). You have to give me more if you want me to risk my capital in a custom illiquid and unregulated over the counter deal, and I mean a lot more.
[0] In my country if you hold an asset for 3 years, you don't pay capital gains tax - this doesn't apply to dividends or any other form of income such as interest or rent. But the accumulating ETFs are fully tax free after 3 years - including the dividends and the gains. You just sell when you need money, no need to "reinvest" manually.
I co-founded my first startup when I was 16, as soon as I reached the lower age limit for being a company shareholder in the UK - I'm not from the UK, but I wanted it and so I found a way. If a 16 year old kid with acne and 300 euro in their wallet can do it, any adult professional can.
Yeah it's a load of risk, you work crazy hours, the stress is insane and sometimes you end up paying instead of earning - so don't be surprised that nobody will share the upside if you don't share the risk. It's not for everyone. But anyone can, if they actually wanted.
Foolish me for not just becoming a shareholder. I definitely had the spare time between the $7k/year I was making to take that risk and not die of starvation.
Your world would be great if I had a guarantee of food, water, a bed, basic medicine, etc. I'd love to have had the ability to throw my time at a risky innovative project. But, I didn't. If I had, and that project failed, I would have literally died. Downsides are too big in this capitalist world for anyone to just become a shareholder.
You said that you want to get all profit you made for the company - that's only possible if it's your company. If you don't want that, that's fine - but don't say the option isn't available.
(Even non-profits etc are part of the market)
I also disagree that "an organization" (noun) implies anything other than "a group of people" as described in dictionary. An organization can exist without any planned structure - doesn't stop it from being an organization. In my teenage years I was part of few "hacker" groups (in the HN sense of the word) - we tinkered with computers and had a website with cool stuff, all under our 1337 H4X0R-esque name and logo. We definitely were an organization, but we really didn't plan any structure at all. We just liked tech.
See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/organization
I wonder if non-religious subcultures like that can last very long though
The capitalist market system is really only a few hundred years old! If you believe Meiksins Wood, she puts it at about the mid 1700s, others put it a little later.
And even then, it took quite some time to reach the rest of the globe.
We've had non-capitalist market economies, anarchist economies, communist economies (of various flavors), gift economies, and many other ways of organizing people.
Ask the folks who run Food Not Bombs about whether they are 'organized by the market'. :D
Don't forget that no all companies can pay what they're worth... most companies don't.