5. Become a top developer at a big software company.
(A variation on 3. You probably won't earn $100 million, but you could definitely earn $1 million. )
6. Become a top performer in entertainment (music, sports, movies).
A fun fact ignored by most people: it isn't just CEO pay that has skyrocketed over the years. Alex Rodrieguez gets $33 million/year, at his peak Babe Ruth got (inflation adjusted) $1.1 million.
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-gets-6-millio...
I seriously doubt Google is paying him 30x his yearly salary not to jump ship for Facebook.
I also happen to know a few cases of million dollar quants being poached from financial companies to software companies (specifically IBM, MS, and a couple of smaller companies I'd probably do better not to mention by name).
People aren't ignoring it. The two things aren't related to each other. Alex Rodrieguez makes so much money because tickets to see him play cost so much (especially compared to what it cost to see Babe Ruth).
For the situation to be the same Rodrieguez would need to be making the same as Ruth (inflation adjusted) but the managers to be making 100+ times more money.
What's actually happened is prices have gone up. The difference you see is that certain professions have much better representation to ensure they get their share of the increased profits.
EDIT: A bit of point clarification.
Sorry, this theory is wrong.
Looking at http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haupert.mlb the average price of baseball tickets has, after adjustment for inflation, not changed very much.
What has changed is the value of the income from TV. Even so, the revenue for players has risen faster than the income from TV.
Another factor, not shown, is the size of the audience.
However even if you add all that together, I believe that salaries have still gone up by more than revenue. And I attribute that to the rise of free agents.
>What has changed is the value of the income from TV.
And as mentioned by another commenter, merchandise and so on. Even if what you're saying were true that players have a larger percentage of the overall pie that their team makes (I don't believe this for a second without a lot more analysis) that could indicate that they were under-compensated before and are now getting a fairer share. Perhaps because of unions, perhaps because of (as you mention) free agents.
(A variation on 3. You probably won't earn $100 million, but you could definitely earn $1 million. )
6. Become a top performer in entertainment (music, sports, movies).
A fun fact ignored by most people: it isn't just CEO pay that has skyrocketed over the years. Alex Rodrieguez gets $33 million/year, at his peak Babe Ruth got (inflation adjusted) $1.1 million.