But, and you'll forgive me if I should incredulous, I hope, that doesn't answer the question at all. In fact, it doesn't even seem related.

Normally we say that CEO receives a salary because they produce work that is worth that amount of money.

(Actually a bit more; profit is arbitrage, so a successful company by definition always pays workers less than their work is actually worth.)

So a CEO who makes $100,000,000 per annum, is considered to contribute at least that much value to a company each year.

When that CEO dies and stays dead, the company sustains a loss of at least $100,000,000 worth of value that year, if CEOs are paid correctly. That money never comes back, because the CEO never comes back, on account of being dead.

Why doesn't the stock market value reflect this supposed value? If I blew up $100,000,000 of tangible assets like buildings, or hell, mass murdered the equivalent salary value in their core company expertise-- software developers at a software company, let's say-- the stock for that company would tumble much, much more. (Even if the goods were insured!) The latter example might even make them defunct, if their industry is high skilled.

That's at the core of my point: why is it that CEOs are clearly paid far over what the market actually thinks they are worth? Far beyond what they actually produce in value?

Why would killing 10,000 developers that collectively are paid $100,000,000 destroy a company, but an executive valued at exactly the same amount can have a heart attack and croak, with very little apparent impact?

Either the market is egregiously wrong pretty much all the time (some well compensated CEO dies somewhere every week), or CEOs aren't worth even a fraction of what they're paid.