Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you
I grind away at our codebase day in day out causing me immense personal anxiety and burnout risk and all for what?<p>Well!  The honest answer is because software engineering is an incredibly satisfying intellectual pursuit.  So satisfying that outside of work in my spare time I <i>literally do it for free</i>, giving away my work to strangers as free / open source software.<p>Why draw a salary then?  Or stock?  Well obviously I have to feed my family.  But also I have to then see that I’m getting a big share of the pie too, because otherwise someone else will be eating some pie that was rightfully mine, and that feels wrong.<p>Would my C-level pals get their $15m exit without my work?  Maybe, but it’s less likely.  Would they get it if the other top engineers and I all downed tools or walked out as a group?  No.  So why is their exit equivalent to several mansions and mine is around about a year’s worth of salary?<p>Waterfall edge marble kitchen island indeed.