That's an idealistic, maybe even naive point of view. There are plenty of CEOs who generally make bad decisions and take increasingly more money while their com

That's an idealistic, maybe even naive point of view. There are plenty of CEOs who generally make bad decisions and take increasingly more money while their companies lose money, their best workers, their most innovative projects and so on. Hierarchical power structures are always prone to corruption and value extraction from the bottom to the top. In fact the above is so prevalent that I'm specifically admiring leaders who are exceptions, actually take responsibility and care more about their workers, clients and the many other people they impact as opposed to their individual gains via compensation and social currency at the top (board, shareholders etc.) Also CEOs generally work hard regardless of the quality of their work. But they generally have a ton of responsibilities and people to talk to. In terms of time invested per day, it is not uncommon for them to do several hours more work than say an engineer. (It's not the same _kind_ of hard though, I personally find social activities, reading and communication much less exhausting than technical work, but it's also less fun.)