Sundar made $8 million total comp in 2020 and $280 million in 2019 ($276 of which was stock). So I'm not sure paying him "billions and billions less" is appropr

Sundar made $8 million total comp in 2020 and $280 million in 2019 ($276 of which was stock). So I'm not sure paying him "billions and billions less" is appropriate or accurate framing. But even if it was, you're probably right that a massive pay cut to the CEO would have no effect if the CEO stayed. However, if a CEO can reasonably command a 9-figure salary, and that gets slashed, they have an incentive to go somewhere that will pay them a 9-figure salary. So that company now has to hire or promote a new CEO willing to do the work for "less" money (I consider myself a capitalist through and through but even I have trouble calling multi-million dollar comp packages "less" in any reasonable sense). There's a decent chance that CEO is going to be worse. So there could definitely be negative effects as a direct result of decreasing executive compensation. It's the same argument as with developers except there are just more zeros involved. If you want to make the most money possible as a dev, you're probably applying to companies like Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, etc. The folks who can't make the cut there go to "worse" places for "less" money. Not saying there aren't idiots that make it into Facebook or genius coders that don't want to work at FAANG-level companies, but it's common wisdom in part because it's accurate more often than it's wrong.