That is grossly incorrect. Also, general managers don't make $12/hr. The average general manager in the US makes ~$87k/yr, and can be as high as $150k/yr, and depending on the specific industry you can end up with relatively sizeable compensation based on profit sharing and bonus structures. A general manager typically oversees a single location of a much larger business entity, with oversight for less than 500 staff, compared to a CEO that may have tens of thousands of people and their myriad workstreams that they are trying to weave into some unified vision/strategy plus dealing with the personnel challenges that go with that scale.
I realize you were trying to be pithy, but let's not do that on HN.
I'm sure you've seen all the before/after pictures they always do for POTUS. If you saw similar photos for folks becoming CEOs of a major company, you'd see a similar change. Being a CEO is a job that will literally run you ragged. It destroys your health, and is not something most people can tolerate for longer than a decade.
[1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/02/12/ceo-tenure-rates/
Possibly, but once that's satisfied, or even the satisfaction of that is well in the rear view mirror, other things become important. E.g. company mission; prestige; moving in the right circles; pushing into politics.
"You know, one day, my mother, she put me on her knee and she said to me, 'Gaston, my son, the world is a beautiful place. You must go into it and love everyone, try to make everyone happy, and bring peace and contentment everywhere you go,' and so, I became a waiter. Well, it's it's not much of a philosophy, I know... but, well,... fuck you. I can live my own life in my own way if I want to. Fuck off."
Replace waiter with CEO and I think it would still work. I mean, why do any of us do anything?
Unironically, yes. Most people don't have enough exposure to actually understand what the job of a CEO is. I have had that exposure, and I don't ever want to be the CEO of any sizeable company. Once you become CEO, work/life balance utterly ceases to exist, because you are the person imbued as the corporation, meaning you are literally always working, always on call, always stuck with the most difficult or intractable decisions where maybe all the options are wrong, and no matter your choice everyone will hate you. It's a terrible job that people only do because it pays so well.
I am not the CEO but I'm much higher up the food chain today than I was when I started. I often reminisce fondly about my time working phone tech support, because I could work my queue and walk out without having to give any thought to anything that occurred that day. That's not the reality of being in any sort of management role, and the higher up you go the less that matches reality.