There is a CVS near me that feels like a horrible dystopia that you don’t need an MBA to understand why it isn’t performing well.
Everything is locked up, even items below $5 and you need to find an employee to get a key.
There is only 1 employee in the store, when I was there she was also elderly and obese. She has to run around to every isle to unlock items for anyone to buy anything. She also has to run the register, leading to a huge line. This store has 30+ isles and is quite large.
All the lights are off with a sign saying this is for energy savings. This plus the store not being renovated for seemingly decades makes it feel unpleasant and sketchy.
They have a robot voice announcing periodically something along the lines of “the AI theft prevention system knows you are standing in the soap isle right now”.
Overall unpleasant to shop there and I stopped going even though it’s the only convience store in walking distance.
I’m not sure I agree with you that equity compensation is only beneficial for C suite level people.
I think a lot of people in the Bay Area who work at large and small companies have benefited from rising stock prices and large amounts of their pay being equity. Look at the price of Apple stock over the last few years. Even a normal IC at Apple has made significantly more money due to their equity compensation being granted over 4 years.
There are also many people who have been normal IC level employees at companies like Snowflake who gained tremendous wealth by them going public and being paid in equity. Sure there are some losers, but I think over a large sample size employees generally win by being paid in equity vs the cash price at the time equivalent.