It's only been high due to historic reasons and hype. Business has been on a decades crusade to push down payment for the software labor aristocracy, and to be fair security has nothing to do with it too. There is absolutely no inherent reason why someone should get higher compensation but get a less secure job, beyond the hype for that job, and security should be guaranteed regardless.
I understand both sides of the equation. I absolutely want to keep the level of autonomy a founder has with a start-up, which you will not have with a union, but at certain point, start up stops being an upstart ( Google, Meta come to mind ) so different rules may apply.
But you are right, average compensation tends to up as a result and even out across the ranks ( and some people don't like that too ).
I understand the psychological effect of termination during the night. But rationally thinking, I don’t find any difference to other forms of termination. For the company though, the prompt termination has a much better security prospect.
It's very likely this guy got a package that's far superior to what many people would have in more secure jobs.
That's been Netflix, Spotify and twitter's play.