Everyone's salaries come from shareholder's profits - including the factory worker's.
I don't think either reason holds - and if it does then those companies will fall to the wayside. If you think Google, Amazon and Apple are wasting millions of dollars of year overpaying for talented leaders then share your plan with the world to do better and take them out of business.
I think it's actually because within 10 years a company can be absolutely destroyed if they don't get the right leaders. Look at Blackberry, Nokia and Microsoft. All were leaders in their fields ten years ago and now have competitors that are outpacing them (in the case of the two latter ones) or simply erasing them (in the case of Blackberry). If Blackberry discovers multitouch first and puts out an iPhone or if Microsoft makes tablets work in a consumer friendly way by hiring Jony Ive - then the whole landscape changes.
Also in large companies workers making $200k+ aren't usually buddies with the board but there is a highly competitive market for them which allows those salaries to be the norm. It's a skills economy and for people without skills a comfortable, not flashy, life is a good and available option.
Your market-based challenge "share your plan with the world to do better and take them out of business", which seems to be a fairly common retort to anyone who takes issue with the way any particular company is run, is not a valid argument, because it is predicated on the market operating correctly.
If the market does operate correctly, as you suggest, then someone could, indeed, start a company, and "take them (Google) out of business", unless of course their hypothesis about overpaying top earners was faulty, in which case they would be outcompeted. If, instead, the market does not operate correctly, then such an attempt might fail because of other unspecified market failures. There is no way of determining whether a challenger's failure to displace the market leader is caused by (in this case) their false belief that companies are overpaying their top earners, or whether the failure is caused by the market not operating correctly. Unless you can devise a way of distinguishing the two, then this type of argument is inherently uninformative.
On a slightly different note, I agree narrowly with your point that companies need talented leaders, though I am not as convinced that the leaders of the companies you list determined their fate as much as you appear (to me) to suggest. For example, Blackberry couldn't simply "switch" to producing iPhones, for a whole variety of reasons.
I don't think either reason holds - and if it does then those companies will fall to the wayside. If you think Google, Amazon and Apple are wasting millions of dollars of year overpaying for talented leaders then share your plan with the world to do better and take them out of business.
I think it's actually because within 10 years a company can be absolutely destroyed if they don't get the right leaders. Look at Blackberry, Nokia and Microsoft. All were leaders in their fields ten years ago and now have competitors that are outpacing them (in the case of the two latter ones) or simply erasing them (in the case of Blackberry). If Blackberry discovers multitouch first and puts out an iPhone or if Microsoft makes tablets work in a consumer friendly way by hiring Jony Ive - then the whole landscape changes.
Also in large companies workers making $200k+ aren't usually buddies with the board but there is a highly competitive market for them which allows those salaries to be the norm. It's a skills economy and for people without skills a comfortable, not flashy, life is a good and available option.