Supply and demand I guess.
Pathetic for a senior SE but pretty awesome for a 16 year old up and coming hacker.
I hope I'm not assuming too much but I'm really hope the up and coming hacker is smart enough to know that his work was worth more than $4,000. That's 1-2% of an annual SE salary for someone with similar skillset.
market value is the same regardless, so this was pathetic
You are right, but that could (probably not) make them go for the bad route because they would get way more money that way. 4k for a bug that could take control of your customer account sounds disrespectful to me.