If you're CEO at a $100MM company, your peers ARE executives at FAANG

Incorrect. See: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

I was under the impression we were talking about ICs here -- your link shows that an upper-middle IC that you'd expect to be choosing between early startup or FAANG will see something around 450 a year, which tracks much closer to what I'd expect.

You said 1 or 2 people who aren't executives. There's way more than 1-2 E7s at Meta, as an example.