My director was recently promoted, and if I applied for his job, I strongly suspect (based on convos with him and others) that I would have gotten it. I didn't apply. I make $80K. I'm not sure what the salary would have been, but I suspect at least $100K, and probably higher.
For me, though, it was a no brainer. My current job allows me to work 8-5 virtually all the time (very rarely do I have to monitor work email outside of those hours). The director is ALWAYS on email / phone, with folks in the US, UK and around the world (meaning email never sleeps). I never travel (I like travelling, but I have a 2 yo and don't want to travel right now), the director routinely goes on weeks long marketing / recruiting trips. When folks visit our center (a couple of times a month) the director wines and dines them. I hate doing stuff like that (in part because I find wining and dining boring, but mostly because it happens during post-work hours). My job is low stress, whereas he is constantly getting pulled in multiple directions by lots of dotted lines. Etc.
Even for double the salary ($160K) I wouldn't take that job. Sure, it means I could FIRE in a couple of years, but I would lose those years with my kid. Not interested. My job enables me to have a decent worklife balance, and the director job absolutely doesn't (in large part because my previous director slept 4 hours a night and worked all the time).
Tellingly, we had no internal candidates for that position. There were at least 4 of us that would have been seriously considered, had we applied.