They could. That rule of thumb has helped me plan for how much of an emergency fund I need to have. The more you make, the longer it will likely take to fully replace that salary.

Another thing people should realize is that salaries do not always go up. Making 200k today does not mean someone will make 200k+ forever more. Plan accordingly.

Post dot-bomb I didn't really recover salary for a decade. (Which still is probably not especially spectacular by tech standards--although I did very luckily get a new job pretty quickly.)