Not to say that some might be motivated by money, but at that level I would be surprised if it motivated many.
My experience has been that most of the people I know that work for FAANG are extremely TC conscious, that's a large part of why they work at a FAANG in the first place and the source of a non-trivial amount of their self worth. If you look around the comments on Blind (a biased source for sure, but certainly a non-zero part of the community) you'll find plenty of people where TC is all that matters.
I interviewed at FB a few years ago and one thing that surprised me when I asked "what's your favorite thing about working here?" I got the same answer from everyone I talked to: the compensation/benefits. I thought for sure the answers would involve working on hard problems at scale, having incredible amounts of data etc. However without fail every interviewer immediately pointed out their comp and other perks as their primary motivator for working there.
In general I would say that people that make a lot of money, make a lot of money because making a lot of money is important to them.
You can say that it shouldn't matter; that a $200k salary decrease to someone making seven figures shouldn't matter, because they're rich and they can take it. Maybe that's a correct assertion; that it shouldn't matter. But: it does.
Money always matters. Money always matters. Money always matters.
Except when it doesn't.
A Principal Engineer at my company, could easily increase his salary 20-50% by moving to a FAANG, and can do Leetcode problems in his head, doesn't move. Because he has more independence here and can work on more interesting problems here.
He grew up in relative poverty. He already gets paid a lot. It's enough for him.
I'm not a cheap person, if I need to spend money on something, I will. It's just that my life style and affinities mean I'm not spending much.
I'm not much of a fashion guy, so no huge collection of expensive clothes.
Nor am I a car guy (I don't even currently own one, and if I were to have one again in the future, it would simply be a tool).
When I travel, the destination is often decided at the last moment, and I'm more of a backpack kind of guy.
When I buying something somewhat expensive (price ~$1000 or more), I'm always evaluating the usefulness of the thing, for example, I kind of want to replace my folk guitar but in fairness, I rarely play my current one, and it's not like this will change with a nicer one (I also have two very nice electric guitars I've not touched in years).
Simply put, partly out of how I was brought-up, partly out of some ecological-consciousness, I do not buy something simply because I can.
Also, regarding this part:
> Its the kind of thing said by someone who has never made that much money
When I make this statement, opposition comes far more often from people "who have never made that much money". My friends with similar or greater earnings get my point of view, even if they don't have the same views, but my friends with lower incomes generally strongly disagree with this kind of view.
I somewhat fall into the demographic you describe but find myself not really caring about maximizing TC because I’m working on interesting and meaningful problems. (I would never be interested in working on adtech or infosec even for double my pay — I’m just not interested in those areas.)
I have met many in tech whose game is maximizing TC. They’re very vocal but I don’t know if they represent everyone.
When you don’t make enough to make ends meet, or to do so comfortably, sure, fixing that situation is going to be very important to you.
But once you have what you need to live the life you want, why not simply live the life you want? One of my closest friends has been at google for almost 20 years. He doesn’t want to be promoted because he likes his job and his coworkers.
OTOH if money is your thing, that’s OK too.