Why are some professions that require almost irreplaceable skills paid much less than others?

[Sam_Lowry]

@coremelt

Yeah but Producers being drawcards makes no sense at all. usually the producer is the guy that gets the funding for a film. So a film being promoted as “from the producer of XXXXX” is equivalent to saying, its the guy that got the bankroll together. And? There is no other connection. It would make much more sense to promote “from the writer of XXX” but part of the problem is that screenplays for modern hollywood movies are usually doctored by so many people that it’s not really possible to credit a single writer.

I don’t know if a producer is ever a draw for a movie, no one sees that a certain person is a producer and decides to go see a movie. But producers do a lot of shepherding a movie through all the stages, and picking out cast and crew, and have input on what the movie should be like. So if you see “from the producer of ‘X’”, it often gives somewhat of an idea of what type of movie and maybe what the quality of the movie will be.

For example, both of Oracle chairman Larry Ellison’s kids have become film producers. Megan Ellison has produced The Master, Zero Dark Thirty, Killing Them Softly, Her, American Hustle, and Foxcatcher. David Ellison has produced Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Jack Reacher, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Star Trek Into Darkness, World War Z, and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Although both were producers on True Grit and Terminator Genisys. But in general, if you see one of their names, it gives you an idea of what type of movie it is, compared to if it’s the other sibling’s name.

Like you said, the writer isn’t more prominently credited and famous in most cases because the script is out of their hands. It doesn’t have to necessarily be other screenwriters who doctor a script, it can also just be changed a lot by the actors or director as the movie is being made. Or it could be shot with no lines changed, but be very different in quality or tone based on the director and actor choices.

@Shagnasty

My point isn’t to play up Bill Belichick or claim that he isn’t an asshole or to downplay Tom Brady’s performance but I still find it more than a little odd that the person that runs most of the show makes about 1/3 of what one of his employees makes. NFL coaches are not interchangeable at the highest levels. American football is the one sport in which coaches have a real strategic impact even during the game unlike basketball or soccer. Great coaches like Mike Ditka, Tom Landry and a few others have proven that consistently.

I know very little about sports, but are the players employees of the coach? I thought that the coach tells them what to do, and has some say on who can play and who can’t, but that players and coaches are all employees of the team. At my job, there are people who can tell me what I need to do, and make things hell for me if I don’t follow their rules, or maybe even get me fired if they really don’t like me and don’t want me there, but they aren’t my boss with full discretion on firing me or not.

@Anny_Middon

I’m not sure how much scrutiny “Battle Creek” got, which was I believe the next Vince Gilligan show to hit the air. It did not however get many viewers, at least not enough to prevent it getting canceled. Which is too bad because I really liked it.

Battle Creek production was announced in September 2013, based on a script Gilligan wrote 10 years before. It got more scrutiny than it otherwise would have, but it also got made because of Gilligan’s name.

[Telemark]

@Sam_Lowry

I know very little about sports, but are the players employees of the coach? I thought that the coach tells them what to do, and has some say on who can play and who can’t, but that players and coaches are all employees of the team. At my job, there are people who can tell me what I need to do, and make things hell for me if I don’t follow their rules, or maybe even get me fired if they really don’t like me and don’t want me there, but they aren’t my boss with full discretion on firing me or not.

In general, pro sports teams have a General Manager who hires the players, and the coach who decides who to play and when. In football it sometimes happens that both of those roles are played by the same person. Belichick is an example of this. There are essentially no decisions that he can’t make or overrule. He consults with Robert Kraft (the owner) on big decisions, but he’s mostly given free rein with respect to football operations. When the roles are filled by separate people they have to coordinate their work, but the GM assembles the team, the coach runs it.

Yes, both of those positions report to the owner of the team. But in practice, except for major signings, the owners defer to the people they hired to run the football team. A notable exception is Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys who is also their General Manager.

[LSLGuy]

@RickJay

This is not a fantastic example, as Gates’s wealth largely did not come from someone handling him a giant salary, but rather from his owning many shares of a company that became very large. He’s not rich because he was a CEO, he’s rick because he owned Microsoft.

Certainly there are some weirdly high-paid CEOs but what you often have a situation where people are literally voting each other giant pay raises in a situation where it is difficult for them to be held accountable to lower-level shareholders.

I agree that Gates’ wealth came almost entirely from owning a huge hunk of Microsoft in the massive growth era. My point was not that Gates got rich on his salary. Although he was well-paid for that.

My point was he’s an example of a person personifying a larger organization. He’s an example of the human tendency to conflate an organization with its head honcho. And given that tendency, a companion tendency arises to over-value and indirectly to over-reward those “super stars.” People love to overstate the value of the #1 character and understate the value of the rest of the supporting cast. Which has a huge influence on how reward systems end up.

If people didn’t have this tendency then in a movie the lead character’s actor wouldn’t be able to earn 10x what the 3rd character’s actor earns despite the lead only having 125% as much screen time as #3.

[bump]

@Anny_Middon

I’m not sure how much scrutiny “Battle Creek” got, which was I believe the next Vince Gilligan show to hit the air. It did not however get many viewers, at least not enough to prevent it getting canceled. Which is too bad because I really liked it.

My guess is because they didn’t flog the David Shore/House MD and Vince Gilligan/Breaking Bad connections hard enough.

I’d probably have given it a shot had I realized it was from both of those guys, but all I recall about the marketing for that show was that Dean Winters (the guy who played “Mayhem” in the Allstate commercials) was in it, and other than those commercials, that’s the only place I’d ever heard of him before.