This is the answer. The reason anyone gets paid what they get paid in the free market is supply and demand, whether it be for their labor, for a product they're selling, or for a security they own. It's not about what they deserve— see the oft-quoted idea that teachers do work that's both difficult and important but are not generally well-compensated. What you make is not a function of what you abstractly deserve or how difficult your job is. It's a function of how many people are able and willing to do it, at what price, and how many people are able and willing to pay to have it done, and at what price. This applies to both IC's and managers.
As others have noted in this thread, it's not always true that managers are paid more, but you're right to note that it's normal. There are some dynamics at play to make it happen. Two that spring to mind are (a) managers are often promoted from the ranks of successful IC's. They've probably been around for a few annual raises / promotions as an IC, plus they get a raise for the management promotion. It adds up. (b) A bad manager has more destructive potential than a bad IC. They can make more expensive mistakes, and devote teams of IC's to making those mistakes with them. Their negative attitudes or incompetence can tank morale across lots of people, rather than just their immediate teammates. Their inefficiency can lower the productivity of lots of IC's, rather than just themselves. All the same applies in the positive direction, but the negative is key, because loss-avoidance psychology is a strong force. So if I'm deciding peoples' compensation and I have a good manager, I'm going to pay them enough to keep them. If I don't, and I need to replace them, then I run the risk of making a bad hire, which would make a lot of people miserable and may lead to more attrition, especially among their direct reports, whose work is also valuable to me. If you've been lucky enough to have bad coworkers fired quickly, you know that their (ex) teammates breathe a sigh of relief and thank management for dealing with it. On the flipside, if an IC gets a new manager every few months, (especially a new _bad_ manager) they quickly decide this is a chaotic workplace and take their skills elsewhere.
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This is the answer. The reason anyone gets paid what they get paid in the free market is supply and demand, whether it be for their labor, for a product they're selling, or for a security they own. It's not about what they deserve— see the oft-quoted idea that teachers do work that's both difficult and important but are not generally well-compensated. What you make is not a function of what you abstractly deserve or how difficult your job is. It's a function of how many people are able and willing to do it, at what price, and how many people are able and willing to pay to have it done, and at what price. This applies to both IC's and managers.
As others have noted in this thread, it's not always true that managers are paid more, but you're right to note that it's normal. There are some dynamics at play to make it happen. Two that spring to mind are (a) managers are often promoted from the ranks of successful IC's. They've probably been around for a few annual raises / promotions as an IC, plus they get a raise for the management promotion. It adds up. (b) A bad manager has more destructive potential than a bad IC. They can make more expensive mistakes, and devote teams of IC's to making those mistakes with them. Their negative attitudes or incompetence can tank morale across lots of people, rather than just their immediate teammates. Their inefficiency can lower the productivity of lots of IC's, rather than just themselves. All the same applies in the positive direction, but the negative is key, because loss-avoidance psychology is a strong force. So if I'm deciding peoples' compensation and I have a good manager, I'm going to pay them enough to keep them. If I don't, and I need to replace them, then I run the risk of making a bad hire, which would make a lot of people miserable and may lead to more attrition, especially among their direct reports, whose work is also valuable to me. If you've been lucky enough to have bad coworkers fired quickly, you know that their (ex) teammates breathe a sigh of relief and thank management for dealing with it. On the flipside, if an IC gets a new manager every few months, (especially a new _bad_ manager) they quickly decide this is a chaotic workplace and take their skills elsewhere.