Fair, but perhaps they’d also work as hard as the CEO if they were paid the same and had equal preferred founder shares instead of common shares. Also, when was the last time you heard of employees with equity getting a secondary to take money off the table vs founders getting to do so? It’s not the disparity per se (because at some point, there is a demarc between the population willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen for org success vs those not and a corresponding comp delta), but the disconnect between the disparity and the output expectations.

Edit: I’m aware of the VC backed share structure. My thesis is if you want more ownership in your dream from your employees, give them more equitable ownership in the enterprise.

At VC-funded tech companies, founders typically have common stock just like employees.

Many times the founders don't have preferred shares and just common as well

VCs many times being the only winners or only ones to get any money back

Has this ever happened in real life?

We’re trading anecdotes here, but in all of the Series A and earlier startups I’m familiar with, the Founder/CEO is the the lowest paid person in the company. I would assume that non-Founder CEOs being hired in would typically be the highest paid individuals though.

There are headlines where the CEO takes $1 in salary, but realistically those are few and far between, and the CEO is usually well compensated in stock options and company jet usage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary

Our employees make several x what our founders make.

It is fairly common for CEOs at pre-scale startups to pay themselves just enough to live on.

To be concrete, I've heard numbers like $50k being thrown around.