I’d argue “wasting money” with higher wages for employees is more of an indicator of being comfortable in its business model and margins rather than just a few people paid millions. For example, Costco seems a lot healthier than Walmart and last I checked the stock for the latter was underperforming against Costco (although Costco is also underperforming in comparison to broader indexes because of the Amazon fears by investors).

Agreed, but by "executive compensation" I did not mean wages only. Not even employees, most of them have non-trivial amounts of stock.