If you don’t pay them more, then you as the business owner or middle manager have broken the employment contract. (Remember the part about performance and raise and bonus?) Many middle managers and business owners get amnesia when raise and bonus time comes. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

The beauty of daylighting is it goes back to a meritocracy in its purest form. I serve clients, I smash deadlines, and other people, either customers, or other clients, pay me money. There is no office politics. There are no broken employment contracts. For my side business, every hour I side hustle at my day job translates directly into more money. And the amount of money my side hustle gains me is more than any paltry raise or bonus you middle managers will ever produce.

Daylighting is the natural byproduct of middle managers abandoning the meritocracy due to laziness or greed. I bet middle managers are out there right now saying, “Why should I give a programmer a 20% raise? It’s too much money! No matter how much they pump out.” But these same middle managers never do a dollarization measure of what the extra output gains their company.

I've known more than my share of engineers doing this. Set a high bar for yourself, and then things stagnate after two years. You either leave, daylight or check out mentally.