"I'm not going to take sides on whether today's executives are overpaid, but those executive titles occupied by actual executives, are not being paid for nothin

"I'm not going to take sides on whether today's executives are overpaid, but those executive titles occupied by actual executives, are not being paid for nothing. Someone who can be an executive at all, even a below-average executive, is a rare find." He's not arguing about compensation. From what I gathered, he's calling to attention his perception of how this self-admitted biased group of people at a conference seem to have something 'different' about them from a random person picked from the population. The best he can describe the common difference is what he calls "functioning with recourse". It's like the same unnamed quality of a startup founder, only best described as "quiet confidence". Everyone is bidding for the same people, because apparently, there is only a small number of people that can take huge responsibilities (like running a company) without someone correcting/covering for them. Even the advice of other smart people can only be taken with a grain of salt, since it might not apply to you. So these two combined make it a difficult job that's easy to fail at, and once fail, a big hoopla is made about it. I'm not sure a lot of people want this sort of job, much less is willing to do it.