Why are important job holders paid less than others?

It’s frequent to see that the pay to important job holders is lower than one to normal ones. Mostly, those jobs are assumed by potentials in organizations. Then why those potentials can’t get paid up to the entitled job value in their organization? Some might say it is because of their breakneck promotion. Their salary increase can’t catch up the speed of their promotion. Yes, it might happen if the organization has step rate increase –step-by-step pay increase within a maximum tolerance in the organization.

Here is another interesting answer. Robert H Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University explains, “why are waiting staffs paid more than assistant chefs at top restaurants?” in his book, The Economic Naturalist. Definitely, the assistant chefs are more important job than the waiting staffs. But why is their salary lower than the latter? He carefully lays out his thought that it is because the assistant chefs have competitive advantage to be promoted to higher positions such as chefs. Meanwhile, the waiting staffs are to be stuck on their job there. It means the career advantage also takes a part of reward as another type of the economic value.

Anecdotal evidences tell many potentials show high acceptance for relatively lower salary thanks to their positive career perspective that is usually emphasized in their salary discussion. It might be fair enough to say so. But tricky situations happen when their organization doesn’t walk the talk about their rosy career plan. I’ve never heard that any organization indemnifies the chronic under-pay when their career is not realized as planned. The probability for their career not to go as planned is getting higher in VUCA world- volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Now, betting for a career advancement in compensation discussion would be too audacious. It is the time to decouple career from compensation, maybe.

thank you.