What you're saying makes rational sense, but people's egos are not rational. It's the principle of the thing: why tolerate a pay cut when there's a long line of companies in the valley itching for your skills?
At least for Google, IMO I don’t think it would generate long term consequences if engineers with this mindset who also aren’t in love with their work left the company.
Let the sociopaths leave then, they aren't emotionally valuable for a company. Plenty of people in the world outside of engineering take large pay cuts to work on something they believe in vs. taking a job that gives them the most wealth.
Being offended by a pay cut doesn't make you a sociopath, just makes you selfish. And "emotional value" is much less relevant to a company than engineering value.
I know lots of people focus on less profit-driven motives for their career, but I bet even more do not, especially at places like Google.
