[Aron]

The competition is starting your own company and cashing in on many millions or billions from it. I think it's perfectly reasonable for the highest achievers to have that in mind as the alternative to compare against and hold some ambivalence on whether they are maximizing themselves.

[Aron]

Think about it, if you have even the remotest capability in reading DL research and simultaneously a decently impressive ability to gab, you can sell a startup idea to GM/Ford/etc. for billions on no real insight. Of course some of these people are gonna stew angrily about whether their 500k compensation is the limit. I bet anyone making that 300k+ at Netflix thinks they could easily do some basic spinoff utilizing their main job objective and further they could use the Netflix background as a credential. It gets ludicrous, but you'll never have much better than what Netflix right now is achieving in employee satisfaction. In fact it's a wonder it's so good.