"If a fairly good hacker is worth $80,000 a year at a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to do work worth about $3 million a year."
Wow, in hindsight this seems way too hacker-centric and elitist. The assumption is that all that other corporate stuff creates no value. I don't think that's true. I think that marketing, sales, etc., can be what enables the $80,000 salary and the combination of everything can be an overall multiplier. Otherwise, the proposition that a marketing firm can help you increase sales would not be true.
Contrast with Joel Spolsky's article about how managers are there to abstract away everything but the hacking problem at hand. There is value created there, and a good manager can multiply the value of a good hacker.
Wow, in hindsight this seems way too hacker-centric and elitist. The assumption is that all that other corporate stuff creates no value. I don't think that's true. I think that marketing, sales, etc., can be what enables the $80,000 salary and the combination of everything can be an overall multiplier. Otherwise, the proposition that a marketing firm can help you increase sales would not be true.
Contrast with Joel Spolsky's article about how managers are there to abstract away everything but the hacking problem at hand. There is value created there, and a good manager can multiply the value of a good hacker.