> There is no reason to think that these people are not at the top of their fields. I'd flip that statement around though, people are at the top of their field

> There is no reason to think that these people are not at the top of their fields. I'd flip that statement around though, people are at the top of their fields when they outperform competitors. If Google's sales team is paid 63% more than Microsoft's (and likely 100% more than Amazon's) then their sales numbers should justify that. Yet GCP is behind Azure and AWS. Your employees aren't great because they have a great salary. They have a great salary because they are great. If the financials don't confirm that idea (i.e. your sales numbers are not higher than your competitors) then your team is not great. Pretending otherwise means you are just drinking the kool-aid of "everyone working here is nice, good and competent" and that just opens the door to a lot of abuse. To be clear I'm not arguing against high wages, justifying layoffs or anything like that, but I take issue with the idea of that recruiters at Google are making 63% above Microsoft and 150% against other tech companies because they recruit really well.