Do you have actual evidence of this? Can you point out a superstar engineer who will work for 65k + options? I can't think of any, and I know quite a lot of developers. I haven't even heard of one working for that little.
A $150k developer can handle setting up and managing the infrastructure, build scalable products, manage a team of $65k developers and be able to build a product from scratch (incredibly hard to do).
A $65k developer can follow directions.
There's no such thing as a successful CRUD product anymore. Everything has been commoditized.
It's the same reason you pay a surgeon a lot of money. Sure, 80% of the time their job is somewhat cookie cutter, and maybe even a med student could do it.
it's the 20% of the time when things get tricky that you really want an experienced surgeon, or in the case of building software that a million dollar(or billion dollar) company relies you, that you want a superstar engineer to handle .
When a junior developer is given a module to write, he may or may not screw that up to some degree. Worst case scenario if he does though, is needing to fix/debug that module.
When a senior engineer screws up core architecture/engine code...the whole project is in turmoil until it gets fixed.
