I don't see how that 4th and 5th bulletpoint in any way contradicts OP. Popular != productive, although it can be hard to tell this apart in real life situations.
Will management be able to explain to the rest of the employees why this person gets 10x their compensation?
If not, it doesn't matter what the facts are from management's POV, it will lead to the same effect on trust & morale. Most people believe they are high performers and the work that they do for the company is valuable; if they didn't, they probably wouldn't do that work. If you have a workforce who believes they are all solid performers and then they have to confront the fact that management believes one of them is 10x better, you've got a recipe for a toxic culture.
One thing that I've learned over the years is that evaluating your own performance and the performance of others is in itself a skill that needs to be developed. Being able to reward high performers requires them to first be identified! In absence of the specific knowledge needed to assess perf, people fall back to likeability and other biases.
> Will management be able to explain to the rest of the employees why this person gets 10x their compensation?
That's a major part of why I consider open salaries to be a terrible idea for top performers. Performance and popularity are frequently uncorrelated, and I'm not talking about the asshole genius trope. You don't want to force your best performers into allocating lots of time schmoozing to ensure everyone loves them and isn't offended by their higher pay.
Almost nobody thinks they're below average in performance, but mathematically some people have to make less than average.
