@d0
A few things to correct here.
“His pay doesn’t impact you” is just wrong. Compensation is a budget. The same board that signed off on a 32% raise for one person signed off on 1.5% for everyone else. Those numbers live in the same spreadsheet. Executive pay and workforce pay aren’t separate universes no matter how much you want them to be.
“Just get a higher value job” means what exactly? Everyone who noticed the gap should go become a CEO? The company needs engineers, analysts, ops, support staff. Those people aren’t failing to ascend, they’re doing the work the company runs on. Saying they deserve less because they haven’t climbed high enough isn’t some hard truth, it’s just a way to avoid the point.
Calling it whining doesn’t make the math wrong. It just means you’d rather mock the question than answer it.
Noticing that the gap widened 32% in one year while your real pay went backward isn’t jealousy. It’s arithmetic.