As far as my experience goes, managers make about the same, or less, as an engineer at a similar experience level. They may end up at a higher compensation level if far enough in the career ladder, but I don't think it's significant in the bigger picture. The average CEO earnings in the Netherlands, including bonuses, is only 5x-6x the average engineer salary.
There are few growth stocks, so I'd expect compensation figures are not strongly skewed by stock bonuses, and are a function of market and fiscal environments much more than profit. When they are raking it in, it will be mostly going to US investors' pockets via buybacks.
Mind you, there are exceptions. The CEO of a certain hotel bookings company makes €17M/year. Technically an american company though.
Probably this I only know Finland tech scene but eg lot of Nokia engineers did FAANG like salaries in 2000s and there is now couple unicorns here where senior employees do very well.
> The average CEO earnings in the Netherlands, including bonuses, is only 5x-6x the average engineer salary.
What do you mean by average CEO? That's about the same as a CEO of a mid-sized American company. Shell's CEO makes a lot more than that, even considering the terrible year for oil.
Yeah, the super high ceo pay is for the super large companies. Pick a super large company in europe and you can find high ceo pay too. Shells and volkswagens ceos for example made 10 million each.
