How much money someone "brings in" is not the sole determinant of how much money they make.
And do you believe that engineers should be making the same as doctors?
Case: a support Engineer of my acquaintance worked to retain $24M worth of at-risk customer contracts last year. He got a better job offer, and when he told his employer he was leaving they said "Tell us what it would take to keep you"
He replied "$3M paid over a two year contract"
They said "No, really, what would it take?"
That's how badly Engineers get treated. Given a proven track record, they still couldn't imagine paying him what he was worth. They'd rather lose the next customer.
Its that attitude, that engineers can be bought by the 6-pack for any application, that causes tragedies like this. Any new guy will fail to save contracts at a much higher rate, perhaps not having any benefit at all until a relationship is built up over a period of years (with new customers of course; the old ones will leave).
Some people find this out the hard way, as non-competes are short or hard to enforce (if enforceable at all).
And they usually have lower salaries because of this. Many "eat what they kill" and if they don't sell they don't make money.
> Executives get bonuses when the quarter is good
Everyone in the company I work for gets bonuses commensurate with how well the company does, even the engineers.
You just listed a very, very small part of every company. Other than sales people and high level execs, no one else has their compensation tied by a significant extent to their productivity. The rest, the accountants, financial analysts, business analysts, strategy analysts, marketers, billing analysts, researchers, designers, managers, etc. all are in the same boats as the engineers.
>But Engineers, who actually do the f'ing work
Construction workers actually "do the f'ing work" as well and they aren't compensated extremely well because although it is a very hard job there are many people who can do the job. There are also many competent engineers who can probably do your job as well, lowering your salary. I work in finance, and there are even more people who can do my job well than there are engineers who can do your job well, thus I am not paid like an engineer. This is how the labor market works.
Friend of mine leads a team that has a 30 million dollar contract with a government client. It's a team of 5 or 6 I believe. He's paid I think about 110K a year. Personally, I wouldn't be okay with that.
Also, sales staff make commission on all their sales. They're paid based on how much business they bring in. I believe that as engineers retain business and help businesses grow and make more, they should be compensated accordingly.
I'm not saying anyone should or shouldn't be making any amount. I am saying that it doesn't make economic sense to pay an engineer millions when you can pay another $150k to do the same job with some productivity loss. If I ran a company and I thought an engineer added a large amount of value relative to other engineers in the labor market you bet I would pay him/her an astounding sum of money, but only up to the point it made economic sense.
>Friend of mine leads a team that has a 30 million dollar contract with a government client. It's a team of 5 or 6 I believe. He's paid I think about 110K a year. Personally, I wouldn't be okay with that.
So how much do you think they should be paid? $300k? $500k? Why would an employer pay them that much when they could hire another engineer for $110k and experience some productivity loss?