&gt; Incorrect. If your company were to pay you the same amount as they profit off of you, you wouldn&#x27;t be sticking around for very long at that company. That&#x27;s the basic requirement of your company&#x27;s mode of production.<p>Why is this a basic requirement?
Assuming by &quot;amount they profit off&quot; an employee, you refer to the economic profit (that is to say the profit after taking into account of all economic costs, including opportunity costs) rather than the nominal value, then I really don&#x27;t see why this is a basic requirement.<p>This really perplexes me especially since the amount the company pays should be exactly equals the amount of economic profit you generate for the company, in a perfectly competitive labour market. 
Of course, reality is not always perfect, but for the average programmer it&#x27;s pretty close (skills are quite homogeneous and programming jobs are less constrained by geography).