While I like this analogy, I think an alternative analogy that more closely matches would be to consider "pool" miners as those that are actual "employees".  They get paid their salary (or hourly wage) regardless of how much money they personally bring in for the business, and regardless of which employee in the company completes the job that all the employees are working on. An employee that works more hours will get paid more since he did more work, but everyone that works gets paid.  Solo mining with this analogy would be more like an independent contractor.  The contractee still assigns the jobs for the contractor to do, but the contractor only gets paid for the specific tasks that they successfully complete. The revenue that the contractor generates for the contractee is not shared among any other employees of the contractee nor any other contractors that the contractee may have contracts with. Some contractors may choose to go out and find jobs independently, others may rely on a service to find the jobs for them (and will then have to pay a small fee for that service), but in either case, they only get paid for the specific tasks that they successfully complete