yes there must be strong accountability for this to work (e.g. a self financed open source project or bootstrapped startup), not only do mid devs overestimate their appetite, motivation to grind and delivery, but also face the Curse of Development wrt communicating to the money people their value. Why should the rockstar grind away 50x harder than their coasting peers for 30% more salary? What happens when the bean counters reorg you or a manager labels you not a team player? Equity is the right form of comp to motivate this level of delivery and at that point it’s not about 50x skills but about sales and overcoming the communication gaps to establish a nonzero price for your equity. Which is why so many amazing niche projects languish and starve and the founder-engineer eventually breaks and goes and ships react apps for whatever empty startup has startup-investor fit that year