I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Carmack was paid 100x more than the average engineer once equity from the acquisition of his company is taken into account.

Does anyone know how much he made altogether from Meta?

The unfortunate reality of engineering is that we don't get paid proportional to the value we create, even the superstars. That's how tech companies make so much money, after all.

If you're climbing the exec ladder your pay will scale a little bit better, but again, not 100x or even 10x. Even the current AI researcher craze is for an extremely small number of people.

For some data points, check out levels.fyi and compare the ratio of TCs for a mid-level engineer/manager versus the topmost level (Distinguished SWE, VP etc.) for any given company.

The whole premise of YCombinator is that it’s easier to teach good engineers business than to teach good business people engineering skills.

And thus help engineers get paid more in line with their “value”. Albeit with much higher variance.

I would agree with that premise, but at that point they are not engineers, they are founders! I guess in the end, to capture their full value engineers must escape the bonds of regular employment.

Which is not to say either one is better or worse! Regular employment does come with much lower risk, as it is amortized over the entire company, whereas startups are risky and stressful. Different strokes for different folks.

I do think AI could create a new paradigm though. With dropping employment and increasing full-stack business capabilities, I foresee a rise in solopreneurship, something I'm trying out myself.

I disagree with the parent’s premise (that productivity has any relationship to salary) but Facebook, Amazon etc do pay these famous genius brilliant engineers orders of magnitude more than the faceless engineers toiling away in the code mines. See: the 100 million dollar salaries for famous AI names. And that’s why I disagree with the premise, because these people are not being paid based on their “productivity”.