I personally don’t know any spine guys making 2-3 mil, I do know quite a few making close or just around 7 figures. Those numbers are highly exaggerated. Average spine guy make high six figures.
Everyone gets paid about median, even in markets with high demand. Even the least competitive markets will start you around 60th percentile, which would be around 650k-700k. Guys that are making 90th plus percentile are just busy cranking out the RVUs.
What this generally means that your employer will guarantee a certain salary, say 500k for example. They’ll also put a clause about wRVUs, and how much each wRVU is worth in terms of money, this is your conversion factor. So say for example your base salary is 500k and your conversion factor is $50. This means that you are guaranteed a salary of 500k, which means In order to generate 500k, you’ll have to crank out 10k wRVUs. If you generate less than that, you still take home 500k, that’s your base. But say you generate 12k wRVUs, you’ll get another 100k in bonus.
However, if you consistently underperform and don’t generate what they are paying you, they will cut your base salary to what you generate over the average of your last few years. As I said, there are no free lunches.