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Comment by alex43578 | Hacker News Reader

Is that feasible? The coding tools already unlock a ton of possibilities for people to create value, but people have to capitalize on it.

I have no clue what this would look like other than maybe an investment fund for people creating apps/businesses based on Claude tools.

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It’s often lamented that some employees have a difficult case to argue for their impact on the bottom line, and as a result probably get paid a lower fraction of their value to the business than other roles where the link is easy to measure.

I can at least “imagine” a model that tries to crack this nut.

But your value to a company doesn’t just come from your impact, but how tough you are to replace, how much others value your skills, etc.

Nike’s logo designer was paid $35. One model says she should’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars, because of what her work product went on to become. Another model of the value says it was worth $35 because that’s what she agreed to.

If, as an employee, you think you’re massively undervalued for the impact you generate, go out to the market and either get another job or start your own business making widgets - either you’ll get that pay bump you expect, or you’ll see you actually were relying on a lot of other supporting mechanisms to generate that value.

If this was all unequivocally true and the end of the story, then no one would make commission, and yet some do.

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