Exorbitant executive pay is a sin incapable of restitution wherever it occurs, much more today than at any point in the past. The leaders of nonprofits especially should be ashamed to accept such pay. Developer compensation generally is not exorbitant to nearly the same degree, so this comparison feels unfair.

> offering competitive pay for executives and managers

"competitive" is key here, it means they have to compete.

I know people on the work floor like to make jokes about executives golfing and yachting, but there is some truth to it that these executives are building and maintaining their network and that leads to contracts and revenue that keeps the company in business. That's what their worth is. That's the competition they have to be successful in.

Mozilla gets about 400M in free Google idiot money. If burning through that for a 2.5M salary but still having to fire 25% of your workforce means you are being competitive at the C-level, then most random people can do that for half the money; a quick 1.25M saved.

It's not about a C-level exec getting a large compensation. It's about them failing abjectly and not being worth a fraction of that money by normal management standards.