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.

I don't think a "superstar" engineer would work for the average (CRUD) product to begin with.

Build something in a week instead of a month.

Speed (among other things, I guess). I have been asking this question for a while, and this is possibly the best acceptable answer yet.

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.