1000x

Why does it follow that a steep pay scale is somehow more sophisticated?

I would believe that is a dangerous path. As soon as you measure productivity as a one
dimensional variable (the pay rate) you open for all sorts of possibilities to cheat. Lines of
code? Easy, write bad code. Bugs? Easy, write nothing. Fixed bugs? Easy, write buggy code in
the first place. As soon as you reduce productivity to a single value you will start getting
results reflecting that.

Measuring productivity has been a hot topic since the seventies and so far nothing of value
has been produced by doing it. It's just not that simple. If it were, your boss should also be
compensated according to his/her abilities, and how do you measure THAT? And even if you pull
off this impossible stunt, I believe you would find that the best creative people in this line
of work require a lot more complex incentive than money.