Comment by mike_hearn

They're paid so much either because they're the company founders, and so they kept a part of the value of the whole company they created. Seems fair.

Or because being a (well known) CEO is a terminal career position. It's a bit like being a top sports star. The wages are high because once they're out, they're out for good. Whatever they earned needs to last them a long time. Screwing up in the CEO position is, when boards are doing their jobs at least, pretty much the end of the road for them because nobody wants to hire an ex-CEO into a middle management or IC position.

Random example: Marissa Mayer. She did well at Google, but once she became CEO of Yahoo! and failed her career was effectively over. Since then her career history is: did a startup with a friend that produced an iPhone app for cleaning your contact lists, and later a photo sharing app. I guess she's nice and pleasant enough, so she also did the usual post-CEO thing of sitting on a few boards, NGO work and investing. It's not a bad life. But in terms of actually running things that matter again - no.

Lots of cases like that.

Who wants to sign up for a job that's high pressure, high hours, and will probably the last real job you'll ever have, and one where your success is often entirely out of your hands? Not that many. So the pay has to be good.