This comment reminded me of a time long ago when I worked at a middle of the road startup with ~100MM in revenue, ~300 employees, and a margin of ~30-40%. On net the company lost money, and probably had a gross profit of ~200k per employee.

A particular principal engineer was prone to arguing that Engineers should be getting paid between half a million and a million per year. On the basis that our contributions were much greater than what we were paid. That Engineer is a CTO now.