Exactly this. He may have been paid "near market value", but he was being paid "near market value" for a different job description than what he actually had.

A normal web dev job, with limited on-call and not a lot of travel, perhaps, but unless he's being paid in the high-$100s, the travel and on-call requirements alone would have made him, in actuality, paid vastly below market.

I'm also intrigued to learn that he worked for Amazon as his one and only job out of college, before joining PA. With respect to the Amazonians on HN, his experiences working on a frontend team (with the requisite and insane oncall) at Amazon may have helped normalize a job description that to most of us here seems shocking and deplorable.

Amazon's salary offers to new undergrads is on the low end of normal (it's a standardized package, almost zero wiggle room on the compensation front). They're also infamous for their oncall system - a major contributor to their sky-high attrition rate. Turnover at Amazon is insane. I'm willing to bet that in his 3 years at Amazon, Kenneth would have seen just about every single person on his team turn over. In fact, if he was at Amazon for 3 years he's already way over the average tenure for devs, and likely the most veteran member of his team.

If you're coming from this environment, the PA deal is only moderately crazier. If you're coming from, well, most sane development jobs, the PA deal would seem absolutely off its rocker.

I spent 2 years at Amazon. I learned a ton, I worked with some great people. But boy, if you think Amazon is a "normal" gig, I've got a bridge to sell.

> Paying someone "near market value" for a regular developer at a normal company, but leaving them on call 24/7 for 5 years is paying them "way below market value".

I say this as someone who went through that exact situation: I worked at a small company

SOP for small companies, except the market value bit, you'll usually get less.