A few problems.
I can fully understand that some skills and people are more in-demand than others, and great execs and managers are more economically valuable than even great line employees. For example, having worked for so long on the business side in Silicon Valley, I almost never made as much money as a similarly tenured engineer. However, that was a discipline that I never really wanted to pursue, even if I would occasionally get comments about how I would make a good engineer.
HOWEVER:
1) CEOs are not always great. They make big mistakes, which usually are first payed for by the line employees. When I was at Embarcadero Technologies, our then-CEO invested something like $40 million or $50 million of capital in a software product called "AppWave", which probably sold a grand total of $500K or maybe $1 million before being put out of its misery. The failure of this product had wide-ranging effects on the workplace security of Embarcadero employees, and spawned a wave of departures from the company of people who felt opportunities were better at companies that didn't make these kind of mistakes. Despite the failure, the CEO stayed on at Embarcadero for another 3 or 4 years as I recall.
2) The multiple of exec income vs. employee income keeps going up. This is indicative of the "rich getting richer" and everyone else treading water or losing ground. You can't expect the majority of people who are treading water to be happy about that situation. An exec wouldn't be happy if their income was stagnant, or if the company's sales growth or profit growth was stagnant.
3) You can't compare exec income to something like a performer, including a Fortnite champion. For every elite Fortnite player that makes millions, there is an army of less-skilled players who make a pittance. Their compensation is based on their empirical performance vs. the competition, and they are in danger of being overtaken by that competition and losing their elite status within a few months. That is not really the case with execs, where once you are in the exec ranks, you can expect to spend years there even if you are rather mediocre. Plus when you do get pushed out for marginal performance, you usually get a very good severence package.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
