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lines of code as productivity measure is not the best example. Can you provide a better example?

I can drop your example just with this: maybe your 100 working/tested lines produce more money for the company that the ones Joe wrote. Or the company needs the 250 lines of code to produce any money, without all of them your value for the company is 0.

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The point is not that 150 lines is better than 100, it's that two people with the same job do not have the same productivity.

Measure productivity by whatever metric you want, it's impossible for two people to do the exact same (amount / value) work.

The only way to prove salaries are just is for every single person to have a different salary.

I agree with everything. But two points. First you cannot measure productivity per employee, it is incredible complicated. Second the difference is not going to be as big as you would expect to have huge differences in terms of salary (like 20% or more). So basically I think when two people with the same job positions have a very different salary you have a clear bias to give one more than the other. If they are really different in their productivity you might consider to fire the less productive or give the other person a better category (in the companies they have Junior I Junior II, Senior I, Senior II, etc).

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