I respectfully disagree with your analysis. Let me explain why through an example.
Suppose you have two options, A and B (seen below):
A: Work for large company Z which reaches 100 million people already through a $10 product. You make an incremental improvement that improves sales 1%. You have now made $10m contribution to the company.
B: Work for yourself. You found a startup that is getting half a million unit sales a year (pretty good, right?), and you double sales somehow. You've only produced a $5m value despite doubling the output.
The answer is that often big companies are much more levered and each unit of input can create much more output (primarily because of breadth of resources and reach) than if you were to work by yourself. Your value is how much you can contribute. Your highest value is your value at the company where you can contribute the most. By a reasonable application of some auction theory, you would expect that your market pay (including costs you can't see like payroll taxes) should be approximately what your second-highest value is. (Because if it were higher, the highest-value place can lower it and you'd still be working there, and if it were lower, the highest value place may not have you)
Suppose you have two options, A and B (seen below):
A: Work for large company Z which reaches 100 million people already through a $10 product. You make an incremental improvement that improves sales 1%. You have now made $10m contribution to the company.
B: Work for yourself. You found a startup that is getting half a million unit sales a year (pretty good, right?), and you double sales somehow. You've only produced a $5m value despite doubling the output.
The answer is that often big companies are much more levered and each unit of input can create much more output (primarily because of breadth of resources and reach) than if you were to work by yourself. Your value is how much you can contribute. Your highest value is your value at the company where you can contribute the most. By a reasonable application of some auction theory, you would expect that your market pay (including costs you can't see like payroll taxes) should be approximately what your second-highest value is. (Because if it were higher, the highest-value place can lower it and you'd still be working there, and if it were lower, the highest value place may not have you)