agoder

As with any currency, if we expect blizzard to create tons of items (inflation) then their price will be devalued appropriately. Unexpected inflation could benefit them initially, but it would also turn people away from the game.

So we complain when schools only use SAT scores for admissions, but we also complain when schools admissions don't exactly follow SAT scores. Ok...

BTW, I am in favor of lottery admissions above some SAT cutoff (a fairly low one).

In a quick test I did, using a better compiler (gcc 4.6.2 or icc) makes it 15% faster.

I think there's a simple explanation for this: asymmetry of information. While the programmer knows that they are a 10x programmer, the company hiring them does not. Interviews, resumes, and referrals only provide a limited set of information, and surely not enough to boost the company's perception of you up to the 10x range. So that's why salaries are much more compressed than skill.

The standard economic solution for these types of markets is to offer a "warranty", the idea being that the better product will be able to outcompete on "warranty". For programmers that might mean agreeing to a contract where you get paid, say, $300k, but if after X time you aren't performing well enough then you have to pay back most of it. Actually this is sort of what happens already with equity.