I wonder about the "worth paying" thing. As an example, I worked at a FAANG company for about 10 years and every project I worked on flopped, was cancelled, or wound up being a net cost. In some sense, the real dollars and cents sense, I wasn't worth anything and yet was paid quite a lot.
My impression is that the FAANG companies have a relatively small part of the company that makes them insane amounts of money (e.g. search ads) and then the rest of the company is just soaking up a lot of that money. In this model of the universe FAANG companies are just over paying software developers and the other companies out there without their own infinite money machine shouldn't actually be learning the lesson that they need to pay their developers more because maybe, as a business priority, they shouldn't be.
I don't entirely disagree with the premise but, knowing that there are companies with money printing machines paying top dollar, rationale talented people will all leave those other industries that don't pay up for ones that do (regardless of whether it is deserved or not). In my experience in other industries, the 80/20 rule applies in that 20 percent of technology employees deliver 80% of the value, but the pay is not well differentiated. In my estimation, many companies could fire half their tech employees, give the rest a big raise and come out more productive.
My impression is that the FAANG companies have a relatively small part of the company that makes them insane amounts of money (e.g. search ads) and then the rest of the company is just soaking up a lot of that money. In this model of the universe FAANG companies are just over paying software developers and the other companies out there without their own infinite money machine shouldn't actually be learning the lesson that they need to pay their developers more because maybe, as a business priority, they shouldn't be.