The education example is interesting because it's the only one of those which tends to be heavily unionised in most western countries at least. So that probably explains why the wages are concave. It's also one that benefits greatly from physical proximity, so there will be a demand for a fairly high number of teachers because they don't "scale" as well.
Although MOOCs may change that a bit.
Based on what I have heard from friends who are teachers, getting paid more as a teacher is usually done via being promoted to a leadership position (i.e headteacher etc) which has more to do with politics than teaching skill. Or getting seniority with experience (measured in years) which does not necessarily correlate with skill either.
This means that teachers who teach well do so because they are intrinsically motivated to teach rather than for the money but of course they do need some money to eat.
I wonder if this could be applied to other fields.
For example, would you rather be paid a guaranteed fixed lower middle class wage to hack on open source projects all day with a 0% risk of starvation but equally a 0% chance of getting rich but you do get a pay rise after 5 years and another after 10 years.
Or would you rather work for peanuts at a startup with a 1% chance of becoming a multi-millionaire?
And would there be difference in how motivated you were to do your best work in either scenario?
Based on what I have heard from friends who are teachers, getting paid more as a teacher is usually done via being promoted to a leadership position (i.e headteacher etc) which has more to do with politics than teaching skill. Or getting seniority with experience (measured in years) which does not necessarily correlate with skill either.
This means that teachers who teach well do so because they are intrinsically motivated to teach rather than for the money but of course they do need some money to eat.
I wonder if this could be applied to other fields.
For example, would you rather be paid a guaranteed fixed lower middle class wage to hack on open source projects all day with a 0% risk of starvation but equally a 0% chance of getting rich but you do get a pay rise after 5 years and another after 10 years.
Or would you rather work for peanuts at a startup with a 1% chance of becoming a multi-millionaire?
And would there be difference in how motivated you were to do your best work in either scenario?