Wrong way to look at it. Paying a brilliant guy 300k/yr to execute noops is a 300k/yr waste even if he uses the money to support himself. The broken window fallacy.
True, but the key point is that it is his brilliance that is being wasted, not the 300k.
"waste" yes, but no wealth is being destroyed.
except the wealth that could be created if the brilliant guy spent the year on other pursuits instead of noops
Well by that logic, we shouldn't work for startups that have the potential to fail... because you could be creating negative value!
The expected return of a startup is usually higher than the expected return of a bigco job and almost always higher than doing nothing. The actual return is more often lower, but sometimes turns out to be really high.
Which is why you should evaluate the risk/reward of a start up carefully.
It's also why, for example, bank robberies aren't worth it.