CEO's get paid by shareholders, workers get paid by companies.
The money that workers bring into a company is often not being used at all to pay these CEO's. It's why so many CEO's have $0 salary or $200k salary.
It's a critical distinction because it clears up so much confusion people have about this topic. Those 300x multiple stories you see are almost always comparing two completely different income sources. You can almost think of it like a 3rd party is paying the CEO to run the company.
