Working alongside someone with significantly better employment conditions than you is disproportionately unpleasant, to the point that working under objectively worse conditions feels better.
I don't think that's a universal thing. I would rather make 10X working for someone who makes 10X (eg, very common situation in finance) vs making 1X sitting next to someone who also makes 1X (eg, DMV)
I get what you are talking about, but it's your choice to obsess more about what the other guy's getting rather than what you are.
So what about when two people have the same title, and tenure but one makes $50k more per year?
This is a similar situation and is happening at many companies. I know I make more than some peers that have higher job levels(and tenure in company) then I do.
> So what about when two people have the same title, and tenure but one makes $50k more per year?
Strangely enough that's a lot less viscerally unpleasant - perhaps because money is quite abstract (and you never actually see person A get a bigger pile than person B, whereas you notice immediately if there's a team pizza that person B isn't allowed to eat), perhaps because it's understandable that companies want to pay some people more and others less, whereas limiting who gets cheap perks feels like it's just nastiness.
