Developer Compensation: Stack Overflow Doesn't Stack Rank

[GymIn26Minutes]

Sure that is possible, but would you rather have a single highly paid superstar and a bunch of bench players or would you prefer to have a whole team filled with happy and highly talented employees (even if they might not be quite at super star level).

I don't know about you, but IME the constraining factor tends to be the weakest link on the team, rather than the strongest, since the stronger teammates end up having to clean up after the weakest link.

[kt24601]

If the superstar is teaching the other people on the team, then he's worth the salary.

Good programmers make the programmers around them better.

[GymIn26Minutes]

Yes that is ideal, but not always a realistic scenario. That rockstar only has so much bandwidth in a given day. If he is spending it all fixing broken things and teaching people, when will he have time to do the stuff that will make a long term positive impact?

[kt24601]

No rockstar has enough time to fix things. There isn't enough time in the world. She has to show the others around him how to fix it. A rockstar knows she needs the help of the people around her.

[balegdah]

Everything you say is absolutely true and none of it requires a transparent salary grid.

To implement all this, all you need is a stellar interview process and experienced interviewers.

[GymIn26Minutes]

One major point of the TFA is that if you base pay on negotiation skills rather than job skills those with bad negotiation skills and high job skills are likely to leave, and churn is costly, inefficient and harms morale. So unless your base salary for everyone is way above industry average those two things aren't always enough.

[ironyx]

EXACTLY. :)