Let's not gaslight, though: a full-time staffer with a $100k salary costs a company $200k because of insurance, pension, benefits, etc. so yeah, that CEO's salary could pay for anywhere up to 10 people... but those 10 people make literally no difference when the problems are so vast that the only way to even get to "very slowly bleeding dry" levels not not succeeding requires firing over 200 people.

The CEO's salary is too high, but also pretty much irrelevant.