This is way, way too simplistic and implies that you somehow can know what the value is... The whole discipline of ethics within philosophy for thousands of years had been grappling with this... because it's hard!
Now, just to give you a counter-example, where it would be very hard to argue that the job compensation was based on value: there was an article about a year ago about some government bureaucrat in either Spain or France who's been dead for seven years, and the government forgot to notice, so it was sending him a paycheck month after month. -- How's that for generating value?
Now, of course, there's also a debate on universality of value. Some believe that the value is universal, but the reality is s.t. it's hard to justify this belief. For example, the value provided to a dictator of a fascist state by his bodyguards doesn't seem to align well with the value those bodyguards provide for the rest of the state (and especially for the neighbors of that state). So, how can you argue that the bodyguard's pay is justified? Why do you have to take the perspective of the dictator rather than the people being under their thumb?
And of course, there is a debate about how to measure the magnitude of value: is it absolute or, again, proportional to the subject of it. Those who believe in universal value also tend to believe in absolute value, but they don't have to. So, again, a thousand dollars might be a difference between being able to make good on rent and becoming homeless for a poor person while for a rich person a thousand dollars might be so insignificant that they don't even notice spending it. And then again, you need to work hard to convince others that the value is absolute (i.e. that dollars don't capture the value and so on).
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Independently of the above:
> When a dev is producing code
I worked for my previous employer for three years. It was before they had any paying customers (a start-up). After I quit, for various reasons, they decided to get rid of my code, and replaced it with something else. In other words, while I worked for my former employer, none of my code generated any value, but I still got paid. They still aren't even breaking even (they have something like five customers), and none of my code is in use anymore. How do you explain my salary then?
And I'm definitely not the only example. Large companies are known for throwing money on something that ends up being a flop, speculatively. So, it looks like there's more to it than simply writing code for the product that generates profits. Don't you think?
Now, just to give you a counter-example, where it would be very hard to argue that the job compensation was based on value: there was an article about a year ago about some government bureaucrat in either Spain or France who's been dead for seven years, and the government forgot to notice, so it was sending him a paycheck month after month. -- How's that for generating value?
Now, of course, there's also a debate on universality of value. Some believe that the value is universal, but the reality is s.t. it's hard to justify this belief. For example, the value provided to a dictator of a fascist state by his bodyguards doesn't seem to align well with the value those bodyguards provide for the rest of the state (and especially for the neighbors of that state). So, how can you argue that the bodyguard's pay is justified? Why do you have to take the perspective of the dictator rather than the people being under their thumb?
And of course, there is a debate about how to measure the magnitude of value: is it absolute or, again, proportional to the subject of it. Those who believe in universal value also tend to believe in absolute value, but they don't have to. So, again, a thousand dollars might be a difference between being able to make good on rent and becoming homeless for a poor person while for a rich person a thousand dollars might be so insignificant that they don't even notice spending it. And then again, you need to work hard to convince others that the value is absolute (i.e. that dollars don't capture the value and so on).
----
Independently of the above:
> When a dev is producing code
I worked for my previous employer for three years. It was before they had any paying customers (a start-up). After I quit, for various reasons, they decided to get rid of my code, and replaced it with something else. In other words, while I worked for my former employer, none of my code generated any value, but I still got paid. They still aren't even breaking even (they have something like five customers), and none of my code is in use anymore. How do you explain my salary then?
And I'm definitely not the only example. Large companies are known for throwing money on something that ends up being a flop, speculatively. So, it looks like there's more to it than simply writing code for the product that generates profits. Don't you think?