> You've never had or seen a boss pulling in 7 figures emailing their employees earning a fraction of that after midnight and being upset at the lack of response?
Absolutely. Though my experience is that the exec is in the office too when that happens...and on a 5000, 10000 or more employee company, if the employee is being called on to do that every now and then...multipled by the amount of employees being called to do that every now and then...generally said exec is basically never sleeping (probably why they're so grumpy).
And yeah, a lot of people would take the role in a heartbeat when offered.... and cry themselves to death in the bathrooms at every opportunities until they either jump off a bridge or quit.
With that being said, a ton of people would do just fine in any of the categories I listed (skill, connection, willingness). What's rare isn't people with one of those things. It's people with all of those things. Having been part of the loop to hire execs, it's really hard. I've seen a lot of people being promoted to those roles who didn't really want it from lack of candidates.
And then there's things like board members, who usually get the spot simply because they invested in the company: you own it, you get to run it into the ground if you want to (within legal limits, of course. But that's why they get the spot over someone else).
Finally...discrimination aside (and that is certainly a problem when it comes to high positions, and it definitely needs to be fixed), being lucky isn't immoral, IMO.