The problem, I believe is in objectively measuring said "productivity". Yes, you say person A is 2X productive than person B. But that's just arbitrary from your POV. Someone in the same team may mark them as 1.5X productive. Heck, the same person you saw working 2X one week might not work the same amount the next.
If you have any suggestion on ways of measuring productivity. That'll be cool to hear.
Some people consistently outperform most others in their clique. Fair compensation is a problem without a great solution there, but denial is not the answer.
That said, while it can't be measured, I also don't think anyone would disagree that it does exist, in that I've easily see engineers that can produce reams of quality code in a fraction of the time other engineers can produce buggy code.
But yes, I do think there is an amount of judgment at the end of the day, which is why this is a tricky subject.
I agree, measuring productivity is very difficult. And as you said, it can be a moving target as well.
But I don't think you are claiming there are not significant differences in productivity? Given that, it's not unreasonable for the more productive people to ask for more compensation, even if it is difficult to identify who they are.
It's definitely a hard problem. There is probably a lot of room for improvement in general for how we approach this.
