Here's proof salary isn't the issue: not only did I not stay and say whatever it took to give Google antitrust cover while hiking my salary (Mitchell would have been chair, would have had to approve, might have done so provided hers went up too; she always earned a bit more than I did while we were partners from early days), I didn't go to a Big Tech company that pays seven figure salaries to people at my level. I founded a startup and still make a modest (16x smaller than Mitchell's, to be precise) salary.

If I'd stayed at Mozilla, turned around Firefox, spawned other revenue lines, then of course the salary would be high -- it would have to be very high, without any equity upside. This remains a problem for comp at Mozilla from when I was there: we can't compete with Big Tech on RSUs, or even on cash, so we overpay a bit and have a "mission-based" ethos that, over time, tolerated politicking and goldbricking.