> "Many of these CEOs walk away with millions whether they succeed or fail"
Surgeons walk away with their pay whether a high-risk patient lives or dies, aside from provable malpractice. Why? Because they made a good faith effort to do their jobs despite an uncertain outcome.
I have never seen the high pay commanded by surgeons justified by the risk of the profession.
Surgeons are paid highly because it is 1) a highly-skilled profession, requiring many years of schooling and practice to gain the medical knowledge necessary; 2) a stressful profession (related to risk, but not the same thing); and 3) highly in demand—due to both 1 and 2, not a lot of people choose to become surgeons, and AIUI, there's a fair amount of specialization within the surgical field, so you can't just swap in a heart surgeon to cut into someone's knee, for instance.
Ridiculously high CEO pay is frequently justified by the supposed "risk" they take on, but experience doesn't back that up. Observation indicates that the primary factor that leads to high CEO pay is the incestuous relationships between company boards and the CEOs they pick—far too often, the CEO of company A will be on the boards of companies B and C, and vice versa, and they will just each support higher compensation for the others because they're all buddies.
Surgeons walk away with their pay whether a high-risk patient lives or dies, aside from provable malpractice. Why? Because they made a good faith effort to do their jobs despite an uncertain outcome.