But if these people with little/no experience are getting paid higher salaries, it strikes me that ohstopitu is probably being paid under market rates at their current position and there will be companies with smart, sane, kind people and good code bases offering similar (or greater) salaries.
There are dozens of other reasons why it might not make sense to apply for those other jobs, but all of those are decisions and tradeoffs for you to make.
If salary is the overriding concern, it's probably an easy fix.
It could be, but I don't think this is good evidence for ohstopitu being underpaid. One way terrible companies get people to join despite being terrible is by paying more.
As an example, I took a lower salary at a nonprofit because I cared about the mission. Or at the other end of the spectrum, financial trading companies pay a fair bit more because they have no mission but money, and are often unpleasant places to work.
> but I don't think this is good evidence for ohstopitu being underpaid
That's a fair enough point. My original post was just to point out that the answer to ohstopitu's original question is not some great mystery, and all they need to do is answer the question I posed back, because it's exactly the same answer to both questions.
But if these people with little/no experience are getting paid higher salaries, it strikes me that ohstopitu is probably being paid under market rates at their current position and there will be companies with smart, sane, kind people and good code bases offering similar (or greater) salaries.
There are dozens of other reasons why it might not make sense to apply for those other jobs, but all of those are decisions and tradeoffs for you to make.
If salary is the overriding concern, it's probably an easy fix.