Anecdotally the only place I heard doing the opposite "consistently" is Japan, and I highly suspect these reports are still select blue moon cases. Cases where

Anecdotally the only place I heard doing the opposite "consistently" is Japan, and I highly suspect these reports are still select blue moon cases. Cases where executives themselves took the hit to keep the ICs at their current level, or at the very least share the burden equally. Everywhere else, I've heard both a near universal reluctance for executive types to take any kind of pay cut ("we can only go up"), and a near universal reluctance for anyone higher in the hierarchy to earn less than their subordinates, no matter how rare their skillset. Which also creates the massive bureaucracy problem where everyone wants to go into some form of management or pseudo-management, and no one is able to prove whether this was at all beneficial for the company as a whole. I even had a personal experience where HR was describing a new career advancement strategy, confirmed developers were paid under market rate, but bluntly said "no, this doesn't mean we'll increase your salaries right away". I was more surprised people in the room didn't react with disgust at this obvious "haha we got you by the balls" move.