I was fortunate to work for a start up tech company that gave us stock options. It worked out well for me. People who have an equity stake in a company are motivated to do good work. If you own part of the business and profit when the business does well, that is one heck of a motivation.
Microsoft was one of our customers back in 1989. That is when they first released Windows. I know quite a few people that were working for MS then. They made a lot of money from MS stock. They all worked for it, 12-14 hour days, and that's what motivated them.
The sales reps for that company I worked for raked it in. Million dollar systems, 4 percent commission with kickers, plus add on sales with commissions. We had such good stuff in our niche that sometimes all the sales reps had to do was answer the phone and take the order. That wasn't true all the time as we would also have some epic sales battles with our competitors.
Best gig out there is to be a motivational speaker. We'd bring in one every year at our annual sales conference. They'd get $10K plus expenses for a one hour speech. And these are what I'd call mid-level types, really good and famous speakers can get $100K easily. Of course you've got to be really good at it and there is a lot of competition, but what a gig!