Lots of people want to work in game development. Lots of people do. Some people say game devs are underpaid. I tend to think that they're paid what they agreed to accept and that is based in large part on market forces (supply and demand, value over replacement, etc.). I also left game development because it wasn't for me long-term. (I was underpaid relative to what I could make in another industry, but I wasn't underpaid by my game-dev company. They quickly hired a replacement for me, I'm sure.)

A company like Google, paying substantially over minimum wage, is probably not underpaying most employees systematically, almost by definition IMO.

What does the ideal salary distribution curve look like, anyway? Should it be a bell curve? A long-tail distribution? Should it have distinct peaks, i.e. everyone with the same YOE is paid exactly the same?

Should the salary distribution mirror the talent distribution, or no?

If you believe that developers are within a factor of 33% of productivity (defined notionally as “value created per week”), then there is excessive skew in the numbers you propose.

I believe the productivity figures are at least a factor of 2, and probably a tail out to a factor of 10 or more versus the median developer (and then a left-going distribution under the median where a substaintial number of developers do not create any value at all). Under that set of beliefs, 20% making ~$150K and 80% making ~$200K is actually insufficient skew vs a “fair” system.

If you're underpaid, that means there is an opportunity for you that will pay more. Aside from H1B, I struggle to see how anyone at google is underpaid.

This really feels like a separate issue.

I'm not implying that you are purposely doing anything. You like most people on HN are not sexist.

What is happening though is a flaw within our logical frameworks. Our cultural biases are making something evident.

If more women are underpaid than men, then that it is obviously and overtly a form of sexism... logically this implicates that If more men are underpaid than women then it is also sexism.

Instead of calling out the logical implication why do people jump to an illogical conclusion?

The question is now, do women experience sexism in terms of compensation at google or do men? Or do neither?

If the answer is neither than what does it mean when I see videos like this popping up all over my facebook feed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pQ-fUXAeCI