Maybe it's true, maybe not, but the one thing I remember (though not the reference) is reading that a study had found no statistical correlation between executive pay and the performance of the company. So my impression was that at least at the highest levels of compensation, executive pay is being set by other mechanisms, ie everyone bidding for the same people.
Btw, blogging about worrying about whether you are as smart as famously smart people seems self-absorbed and insecure to me... What do I get out of reading that?
I might actually expect an inverse correlation between executive pay and company performance. The reason is that high executive pay seems to be linked to broken oversight by the owners and directors. I'd expect companies where the owners are not in charge to do worse, as the management pillages the company for short term profits.
"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.
Btw, blogging about worrying about whether you are as smart as famously smart people seems self-absorbed and insecure to me... What do I get out of reading that?