[karpierz]

> You're paid what you're known to be worth.

You're paid somewhere between the minimum amount you'll accept and the maximum that the company is willing to give you (which in the case of some VC funded companies, may exceed the amount of profit you generate!)

Where you're paid on that spectrum depends on how much leverage you have vs. the company.

[WalterBright]

In other words, you're paid at the intersection of Supply and Demand curves, i.e. the Law of Supply and Demand.

How much a company is willing to give you is based on the value you create. Companies are not going to employ someone who costs more than the value they produce. If the person creates far more value than they are paid, then the person is apt to find someone else who will pay more.

[verteu]

Your pay is upper bounded by the value you create, but may be arbitrarily less, especially if there is monopsony, high barriers to moving/reskilling, and/or collusion among employers.

There's nothing inherently fair about the "intersection of Supply and Demand curves" because employers manipulate them both -- by lobbying for increased immigration, reducing competition through mergers&acquisitions, erecting legal barriers for competing businesses, colluding to depress wages, and reducing incentive to compete via common board membership & equity ownership.

[AtlasBarfed]

Strangely, corporations never want to increase wages in response to labor shortage.

And they of course suppress wages by cartels, lobby for increased immigration (bonus: h1bs are captive labor), etc.

Spare me the microecon 101 fantasy.

[xyzzy123]

> How much a company is willing to give you is based on the value you create

Value in collaborative settings is extremely difficult to measure. How much is that DEI officer worth? The corp lawyer who, being honest, is not doing any high stakes work? The team lead who doesn't write code? The careful, slow IC vs the fast, sloppy IC? It's all guesswork.

[fhdkdhfj]

The catch is that the company often knows more about your value (monetary, not personal) than you do. And they're often more experienced negotiators than you. So as a perspective employee you're normally at a disadvantage, unless you're at the tail of the bell curve or in a very in demand field.

Most companies are happy to pay you way less than you're worth if you'll accept it.

As an engineer I'm used to all the facts going on the table and then reaching a consensus. That's not how hiring works, the employer won't show you their cards. They ask how much you made in your last job, but they won't tell you how much the employee that left the position you're applying to was paid.