The competition is starting your own company and cashing in on many millions or billions from it. I think it's perfectly reasonable for the highest achievers to have that in mind as the alternative to compare against and hold some ambivalence on whether they are maximizing themselves.
Think about it, if you have even the remotest capability in reading DL research and simultaneously a decently impressive ability to gab, you can sell a startup idea to GM/Ford/etc. for billions on no real insight. Of course some of these people are gonna stew angrily about whether their 500k compensation is the limit. I bet anyone making that 300k+ at Netflix thinks they could easily do some basic spinoff utilizing their main job objective and further they could use the Netflix background as a credential. It gets ludicrous, but you'll never have much better than what Netflix right now is achieving in employee satisfaction. In fact it's a wonder it's so good.