I was told by someone in HR that has HR friends at Google that the manager of a group always makes at least as much as the highest paid employee in that group.
Your friend of a friend lied to you. Comp is mostly based on level and performance and it's totally possible to have a higher level employee reporting to a lower level manager.
That's the plan, but it doesn't always happen due to internal transfers. Anyway it means little because if you are highly paid then you also are high level title so you just get managed by your manager's manager but stay working on your same team.
