There’s a very wide spectrum of what a given dev has seen, has experience with, is good at, and how they communicate and use their time. So, I think it’s a bit different because of that.
I have worked on many teams, and I’ve done some hiring. And now I teach #design and #dev . So, I’ve seen people getting 160k and be barely contributing - and people getting 50k and doing a tone of meaningful work. Laying brick is a lot more visually measurable.
But I do think that in many cases, hiring two 70k devs instead of a single dev is often the right choice. The key is - they have to be able to think a bit more cross-role and not just wait for directions. Because that’s often why you need the “Senior” devs. If everyone were to think of themselves more like a _designer_ instead of a coder - a lot of this gets fixed.