This surprises me on so many different levels. To me, Rust is nearly the same thing as steveklabnik. Considering his level of engagement and enthusiasm I figured he was one of those people making easy SV money.
Between this and Jess Frazelle (another household name) never getting a promotion shows how wrong this industry is.
Mozilla is actually the best-paying job I've ever had, if that tells you anything. And it was an okay salary. I've never been more financially secure. But I'd like some of that "easy SV money" :)
If you asked your engineer peers how they would feel if you were paid an equivalent salary, I am confident some of them would admit that they would not like it. Privately, I think most of them would definitely not like it but would probably refrain from publicly admitting as much.
Which to me is the crux of the matter. If I was your manager at Mozilla and looking to maintain team cohesion and minimize talent loss, engineers would always come first. In my experience it is very common for managers with an engineering background to think that anyone can be a technical writer. Same for evangelizers. People do it for free if they like the technology that they are using. These are not strong bargaining foundations.
I think your first paragraph is on the money, this is indeed how many engineers and engineering managers think. You seem to throw in your cards with that viewpoint in your second paragraph, though, and I think the logic there is circular. Engineers and engineering managers persistently devalue the skillset behind being an excellent technical writer, and the value that an excellent technical writer brings to a project, which in turn weakens the “bargaining foundations” of technical writers artificially. It’s been my experience as an engineer that this artificial devaluation is harmful to projects both directly and indirectly, because technical writers are inevitably aware of the fact that it’s happening. That technical writing maybe has a greater foundation in so-called “soft skills” doesn’t mean that it’s less valuable, and especially in cases like Rust where the documentation can very reasonably be considered part of the product, it’s a huge mistake to undervalue the work of someone like Steve Klabnick that way. In general, I can’t imagine being resentful of a technical writer earning as much or more than me as an engineer: a perfect gem of software engineering that no one uses is a failed product, and it’s very much because of the work of technical writers that good projects see widespread use.
Yet what I see most of the time is that organizations exploit employees' passion. The more you like your job, the less likely you will leave, so why bother paying you more?
I had a moment of epiphany when my manager said to me in a 1-to-1: "You've been very passionate and doing great. Now $competitors are in town, so we will raise your pay by $a-double-digit-number %".
I went out of the meeting and said to myself "Screw it, I have been exploited for $X years. I will start looking for my next job tomorrow".
> "we will raise your pay by $a-double-digit-number %" ... "I will start looking for my next job tomorrow"
I've always wondered how much value employers lose via this sort of error. 'Reactive' compensation absolutely does drive people away, for good reason. Retaining employees by matching outside offers is even worse; outside the very highest levels it fosters instability and encourages people to interview elsewhere.
So sure, your employer saved ($X annually * years without raise). But then they lost an experienced employee, likely to a competitor, had to go through a new search-and-training period, and quite possibly had their prior crappy salaries on Glassdoor driving away candidates.
I assume it's a net win sometimes, but I strongly suspect it's often a short-term tactic that ends up not only mistreating employees but losing money.
> I've always wondered how much value employers lose via this sort of error.
I suspect nobody can come up with a number that would convince everyone in the chain in a large organization. If that could be done, I wouldn't end up in this situation in the first place.
1. They have low-balled me before, they will do it again.
2. They don't pay based on how much value I generate but as little as they can to prevent me from moving.
Royality is a two way street. While the company doesn't have my best interest in mind, why should I have theirs in mind? It would be foolish for me to not look around. Once I put in the effort to look around and got a better offer, I might as well leave the company for good.
being a household name is very weakly correlated to "getting that SV money" (an exception being household names in machine learning, where you will indeed make all the money)
How is that relevant? GP literally used the words "to me". To anyone who has become acquainted with Rust in the past few years, steveklabnik is a much more familiar name than Graydon, who hasn't been actively involved in Rust development in a long time.
Between this and Jess Frazelle (another household name) never getting a promotion shows how wrong this industry is.