An excellent question - and one that depends heavily on quality of management and perceived value.
Perceived value is the most common - no-one gets promoted on their past performance only on their expected performance. And so the difference between 50/hr and 200/hr is
Please note that 200/hr is not 10x 50/hr. Either we are comparing top coders to minimum wage coders - of which I suspect there are few if any (in each "locale" not globally)
or we are actually capping top coders - this is very likely the explanation - to get to 500/hr or 5000/day or ~1million/year you need to be looking at equity level compensation. And that's a different issue.
Anyway where was I ? Yeah perceived value - this can always go up - but at a certain point you are no longer discussing per hour rates but project total rates and soon after the value becomes equity (I guess at around 1% o total perceived value)
And the time to have that conversation between hourly rate, project and equity? That depends on the cluefulness of management
I will suggest that climbing that compensation ladder from hourly rate to weekly rate to project rate to equity is a focus on understandin business problems, and how tech can solve them, understanding team and coordination problems and selling the business solution.
Perceived value is the most common - no-one gets promoted on their past performance only on their expected performance. And so the difference between 50/hr and 200/hr is
Please note that 200/hr is not 10x 50/hr. Either we are comparing top coders to minimum wage coders - of which I suspect there are few if any (in each "locale" not globally) or we are actually capping top coders - this is very likely the explanation - to get to 500/hr or 5000/day or ~1million/year you need to be looking at equity level compensation. And that's a different issue.
Anyway where was I ? Yeah perceived value - this can always go up - but at a certain point you are no longer discussing per hour rates but project total rates and soon after the value becomes equity (I guess at around 1% o total perceived value)
And the time to have that conversation between hourly rate, project and equity? That depends on the cluefulness of management
I will suggest that climbing that compensation ladder from hourly rate to weekly rate to project rate to equity is a focus on understandin business problems, and how tech can solve them, understanding team and coordination problems and selling the business solution.