Employees are not empathetic toward their cash-rich bosses: CEOs are still struggling to get layoffs right.

• Author: Dodson, Jack

A spotlight has recently been cast on many executives who have displayed a particular lack of self-awareness: flaunting their success in front of their employees. Income inequality--and the ways the working class is subjected to salaries several hundreds of times lower than their counterparts--is among the most talked-about aspects of economic ethics.

Even during the 20th century, fair pay organizers were pushing back against what they called "executive excess," referring to studies that showed exponential growth in the gap between the salaries of executives and workers. The trends have only increased since then.

The problem of inequality has become so strong that entire think tanks and news organizations are devoted to tackling the issue as the gap widens. The pandemic famously led 114 million people to lose their jobs in the first year alone, while creating 5 million new millionaires at the top end of the wealth gap. Credit Suisse, which tracked the increasing wealth gap, called it "completely detached" from the devastation caused by COVID, according to BBC.

As ethics around management practices evolve, CEOs have continued to upset their workers and the public in recent years. One April poll by JUST Capital, a financial policy organization, showed that 87 percent of US citizens feel the widening pay gap is a problem. That study, carried out for the organization by a marketing company, found the average CEO pay to median worker salary ratio was 235:1, with the gap widening during the pandemic.

No CEO or executive is exempt from public opinion on the issue. Even as billionaire philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has built a reputation as an expert on global poverty and health interventions, he made headlines during his divorce for the vastness of his wealth. On top of that, the divorce proceedings in 2021 highlighted that Gates had a habit of driving to work in expensive cars and asking women who worked for him on dates. At the same time, Gates was excoriated by news outlets for not knowing the price of basic groceries.

The ways CEOs can get themselves into this kind of trouble vary. From showing off expensive toys like fancy cars or homes to implementing policies that cut benefits, management choices often pit management against their employees and reveal a stark contrast. Vishal Garg, the founder of mortgage lender Better.com, nearly lost his job earlier this year after he decided to lay off 900 workers en masse by video...