Absolutely. I read about this "conundrum" that a CEO doesn't work 1000 times more than a regular employee, so why should he get paid that much, in the book "Th

Absolutely. I read about this "conundrum" that a CEO doesn't work 1000 times more than a regular employee, so why should he get paid that much, in the book "The Winner- Take-All Society" by Frank and Cook. At the time the argument sounded reasonable. But it's not. A CEO doesn't work 1000 times harder, but his work is for sure 1000 times more impactful that the work of a regular employee. Just compare Nadella with Ballmer. Ballmer was running the company into the ground, so much so that Paul Graham wrote an essay declaring the death of Microsoft [1]. One way or another Nadella found a way to turn the ship around and bring it back to be one of the top 3 companies in the US, and maybe in the world. Now, take a random sample of 1000 regular employees at Microsoft. They work hard, but if they leave tomorrow and are replaced, and sometimes even if they are not replaced, Microsoft will be just fine. If Nadella leaves tomorrow, it's not at all clear that Microsoft will be fine, because we know of times before him when it wasn't fine. [1] https://paulgraham.com/microsoft.html https://paulgraham.com/microsoft.html