I’m not sure I understand you, I believe we’re making the same point? I mean that there’s a strong incentive to offer competitive pay (as in pay more e.g. to poach from a competing company).
A company might take a 30k hit letting a 50k/yr employee walk away but they won't raise their salary to 56k to keep them from walking. But w.r.t. a CEO they will raise their salary from of 5M to 17M so that investor confidence won't tumble by them quitting.