Producer vs. Engineer

David Edery of MIT recently posted about
salaries of graduating students in the games industry.He writes:

Students who applied for engineering jobs seem to be getting offers in the 70s -" in some cases, the high 70s. The same students got offers approximately 10K higher from companies in other industries; i.e. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. So the gap between game company offers and non-game company offers appears to be narrowing for engineers. In general, I was amazed at how high the offers were!
On the other hand, students who applied for production jobs (even students with a double major in computer science) seem to be getting offers in the 30s. I find this to be completely bizarre. I mean, yes, I understand the laws of supply and demand (there are more wanna-be producers and designers than well-trained engineers). And yes, production skills are harder to learn outside of the work environment. But are talented entry-level producers really worth only half the equivalent engineer? Even when they have the same academic training? (After all, a solid grasp of programming is useful to both producers and designers, not just engineers!)

In general, the way salaries are structured in the games industry is very similar to other types of industries. The executives and management make the most, followed by programmers, musicians, artists, producers, designers, administrative staff, qa and phone support. There's some overlap between the different areas, but that's what the general picture looks like.
This is what I have observed in my 9 years of working in the games industry:
Artists become Lead Artists or Art Directors and Programmers become Programming Leads or run off and start their own company. Traditionally Producers have come from non-production areas of the game company. Part of this is because going from art or programming to producer would typically result in a pay cut. So instead, producers come from the lesser paid areas of the game company -- qa, tech support, administrative. I'd say 75% of the time they come from QA because of proven experience with managing people.
The reason why an entry-level producer is worth less than an entry-level engineer is because entry-level producer isn't going to allow a game to ship faster. In game production, you can never have too many engineers and artists.