Post contents
Early on in becoming a VP, I had a friend who was a COO for a much more successful company being paid 30% less than I was. Why? He's a better engineer than I am. After all, why would he be a C-suite instead of my "lowly" VP role (my words) if he wasn't better than me?
From his perspective it was a "matter of timing" as to why he was C-suite and why I was a VP; he got in earlier to his respective company and as a result had more sway into which particular role he was placed within. This, in part, helped explain the gap in pay in my mind - he hadn't yet had his payment catch up to his success.
I've found this to be true in many instances of hiring; the earlier you bring someone on for the more likely they are to have a senior title and responsibilities in comparison to those brought on during an organization's middle-of-life. After all, if they need a role filled and you're present; why not give you the ownership? And so long as you're doing good work, your experiential knowledge at the org trumps more traditional knowledge-sets that exist external to a company.
However, there's a second nature to this varied level of job satisfaction between him and I: The level of respect being paid to each of us.
While my friend had to fight to do his work — like needing to go behind other management's backs to form relationships with customers which fell under his job duties — I was given free reign to run my team the way I felt best aligned with the company's success. It turns out that disrespect of one's work can come at all levels in an org.
It's this misalignment of respect and payscale that I think about to an inordinate degree.
As of today, I find myself making more money than a majority of friends and family; often to an exponential difference.
I genuinely feel bad about this and don't know how to reconcile this. It's not that I'm a harder worker than my mutuals; far from it. I have some friends who work 10 to 12 hour shifts nearly every day of the week to make ends meet. Their work often includes manual labor that results in a cost incurred to their long-term health and well-being.
It is my belief that the systems at play in our daily lives preclude the opportunity for effort-based, more egalitarian distribution of pay. And to the system's credit: Why should it?
For example, if we believe Apple's numbers from their third quarter 2025 earnings call, they brought in $94 billion in revenue in a single quarter. This with "more than 150,000 employees" at their disposal.
That's an average of $2.5M (M as in "million") in revenue per employee Apple makes every year.
This calculation of:
Is how you calculate "Revenue per employee" or "RPE" for short.
Compare and contrast Apple's RPE of $2.5M with the average RPE of $170K for other professional services, and you'll see why companies want to retain their talent within this highly lucrative space.
Whether you think this is right or wrong, the tech space is valued at a disproportionate rate than other industries.
While it's not inherently our responsibility to solve this constraint, it is our duty to acknowledge this gap in compensation amongst our teams. When in leadership, we'll find ourselves managing budget, delegating pay to our team, and balancing these factors to ensure that work is produced at a net-positive for our organization.
To some, even acknowledging this fact can come off as egotistical. I find myself consistently questioning my worth on a team. I'm never the smartest person in the room and am seldomly even amongst the top percentile of folks when it comes to engineering capabilities.
This line of questioning is common with many high performers I've met in my time. Some of the most lovely and intelligent people I've met are often met with inquiries of self-doubt despite their successes. This is often called "Imposter Syndrome" within the developer culture.
But I regularly question to what degree this questioning of my skills is a result of imposter syndrome and what level of truthfulness hides within?
I think that, too, may be a symptom of imposter syndrome.