Have you considered being paid $20 million for one year, and then staying home with family for the next ten years? Even after taxes, you'd still have much more of both time and money than a career in, say, air traffic control.
Following Boeing example you given below - it's not like the guy was given offer to become a CEO out of the blue & had to endure year to be set for life.
He was slowly climbing through the ranks of huge organization over the span of almost 30 years. Given later revelations I certainly wouldn't call it easy or calm - likely even morally challenging sometimes (not admiring anything here - simply any position of power comes with this kind of issues - no matter you're playing for good or bad guys).
Taste of Boeing shareholders for execs is whole other discussion, but I really don't think there's huge crowd of people both willing and capable of filling those shoes.
Maybe, if that was even offered as an option. I doubt I'm that competent, however, and just the fact I have that doubt probably excludes me from the possibility.
Hell, I would gladly take any job where "failing upward" was the rule. Do it for a few years, fail, and then move on to the next higher level opportunity.
Most job levels fail downwards, but once you get to a certain level, for whatever reason, nearly everyone fails upwards. I think "director at a FAANG" and "VP at a medium sized company" are about the level where roles start defaulting to failing upward.
