> I don't necessarily agree that the bar is lower because you're paid less
And then this
> I naively still want my bike to work properly
It reads like your conclusions are at odds with each other
Anyway I think we can wrap this one up just heading over to levels.fyi and comparing 2021/2022/2023 salaries for positions with 2024 salaries for the same positions.
Either way, I can see how those quotes seem at odds with each other, but the key word in the second is "naively". As in, I'm happy I got a good deal, but how well I expect the job to be done isn't tightly coupled to how much I'm paying for it, not often anyway. I as a software developer of an identical caliber to some other arbitrary person applying for the same job might ask for some amount less, but it doesn't mean I'll be expected to do any less than what they were hiring someone for.
If the person I got a deal on to fix my bike did a sufficiently terrible job, I might expand my budget, or I might attribute it to a careless person. I might expect similar results because I'm not hiring the dealership to do a repair, instead I'm hiring a smaller shop in a cheaper area, but ideally I still get an oil change.
None of this is categorically true of course, but it's just an attempt at articulating that everyone feels like whatever they're paying, it's enough to have the output be. I guess it's important that the work be categorically similar, like I'm not going to pay $40/hr for a junior boot camp dev and hope they'll design a data center for me.
That difference in perspective seems to be at the root of the disagreement, too.