But the CEO job is generally given to somebody who a) has proven himself (5mm <= net worth < 15mm) b) is willing to work 80 hours per week c) is willing to p

But the CEO job is generally given to somebody who a) has proven himself (5mm <= net worth < 15mm) b) is willing to work 80 hours per week c) is willing to pick work over family/friends, no matter the circumstances I'm not convinced that B and C are good things. Sometimes, it's necessary to work 80 hours per week, but doing that for years on end is unhealthy and counterproductive. Most of the long hours in upper-tier corporate result not from any benefit to those extra hours worked, but rather from oneupmanship. As for C, consider this. In a corporate environment, where one is working to enrich other people, putting work ahead of family and friends is, generally, a very bad decision. After all, the probability of becoming CEO is very small, and a person who laid up 70 hours per week only plateau at the VP level is just a loser who made bad choices and wasted his life. The only difference between the CEO and that moron is that the CEO won the lottery while the also-ran lost. Following the lottery analogy, you wouldn't take financial advice from a crackhead who bought twenty Powerball tickets every night, and happened to win $200 million. So, do you really think it's a good thing for large companies to be governed by those who wasted their lives in a relatively pointless quest for power? So why would somebody who's already rich be willing to do this? Money. Status. The status, in this case, comes from the money. Ask instead - why did it take 500 times the average worker's salary to convince him to take the job? It doesn't. People would gladly take the job for 10x. If you haven't figured it out, corporate compensation is the result of a fellatio daisy chain. The board is staffed by executives of other companies, who allow the CEO to raise his pay, because he is on their boards and will vote in their favor if they do so for him.