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gwern comments on My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination - Less Wrong
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Do you really think that you can evaluate someone's productivity simply by looking at their salary?
For instance, imagine an exceptionally intelligent and hard-working individual who leaves a high-paying job in finance or tech to work on a startup. Have they suddenly become unproductive because they have switched to a role that pays less (in the short term)?
Conversely, imagine a similar individual who is working at a startup for 16 hours every day, but grows burnt out and leaves to take a job at a normal tech company, where he works for only 8 hours a day but makes a much higher salary. Can this person really be said to have become more productive?
By economic definition, he's more productive in the latter position... unless you are smuggling in unstated axioms about positive externalities about the former position overwhelming the revealed preference of the economy for his work in the latter position, which I rather hope you aren't, since that would be begging the question.
I'm not talking about positive externalities, I'm talking about actual work being done. Some structures-- early-stage startup companies generally included-- tend to involve disproportionately large amounts of work relative to others, which is made up for by the potential for very high, if delayed, payoffs.
The "revealed preference of the economy" is difficult to actually determine in such cases given the uncertainties involved, though it could likely be estimated using reference class forecasting and similar predictive techniques.