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I don't know which editor you use but in my experience using tabs or spaces is just changing a single setting and then forgetting about it. The most likely explanation is that a lot of languages recommend spaces for indentation, so probably big companies just follow those guidelines and they also pay bigger salaries. Trying to find some causation of "people who use spaces are better" is not going to go anywhere.

This has been posted before.

My theory is that people using spaces are more concerned about their code being readable outside one particular IDE on their machine and that could extend to them generally doing better quality work because they view the big picture better overall.

Is 'lazy' the correct term then? Shouldn't it be 'more efficient'? By looking at the rest of your analysis anyway.

You’re right. I meant lazy in the Larry Wall sense (more efficient) but was also trying to pick a word that wouldn’t paint tabs in a bad light, because it’s more efficient in a different way.