> Is being "closer to business problems" really the sole reason? Or even a big reason?
It's got to do with visibility. Those people more visible to the holders of the purse strings get paid more than those who aren't. The closer you are to the business side of things, the more visible you are to the profit line.
Compensation is very closely tied to how visible the role is to the company profits and/or leaders. A highly skilled DBA who ensure the most profitable application's DB is up, running and tuned is less visible than the business major who uses QlickView to send reports to the CEO. Guess who has more leverage to ask for money.
Sidenote: Skills have nothing to do with compensation. For a long time I used to feel guilty whenever I learned that I was making similar money to someone who was more skilled at my role than I was.
Now I don't feel guilty at all if I find out I'm making more than that person, and this is because I realised that the HR head, who has few relevant skills and can viably be replaced by a mollusc, makes more than I do.
I don't feel guilty making more than others anymore, because other people making more than me don't feel guilty about making more than me.
I get what you’re trying to say, but then how come frontend developers tend to get paid less than backend devs, who in turn get paid less than devops engineers?
Because front-end developers are the least visible to the CEO (the furthest away from the business data).
Backend developers are a little bit closer to the business data than backend developers.
Devops are even closer to the data that the CEO wants.
The "visibility" is not "visibility relative to the product" but "visibility relative to the profit".
If you draw the entire business as a series of concentric circles, with the circles representing the business, the centre of the circle (the heart of the business) is Accounting, the next layer would be HR, the next would be sales, then marketing, then maybe advertising, then product development...
The only people less visible (further away from the business data) than the front-end devs are the data entry people.
There's also supply/demand in play. There are a lot of front-end devs out there. Normally when I see someone advertise themselves as full stack, they are backend heavy and can create passable front end code. Not often I see it the other way around which adds even more supply.
It's got to do with visibility. Those people more visible to the holders of the purse strings get paid more than those who aren't. The closer you are to the business side of things, the more visible you are to the profit line.
Compensation is very closely tied to how visible the role is to the company profits and/or leaders. A highly skilled DBA who ensure the most profitable application's DB is up, running and tuned is less visible than the business major who uses QlickView to send reports to the CEO. Guess who has more leverage to ask for money.
Sidenote: Skills have nothing to do with compensation. For a long time I used to feel guilty whenever I learned that I was making similar money to someone who was more skilled at my role than I was.
Now I don't feel guilty at all if I find out I'm making more than that person, and this is because I realised that the HR head, who has few relevant skills and can viably be replaced by a mollusc, makes more than I do.
I don't feel guilty making more than others anymore, because other people making more than me don't feel guilty about making more than me.