This is an excellent point/question. As a software engineer, I've worked at companies where the both the CTO and one of the VPs were what I would call CIOs --

This is an excellent point/question. As a software engineer, I've worked at companies where the both the CTO and one of the VPs were what I would call CIOs -- they were networking/infrastructure people. Writing software in an org like that is often an exercise in insanity. To many infrastructure people, the software itself (and related topics like developer experience/productivity) are barely even things they can wrap their heads around much less care about. I am sure that the inverse is true. Trying to do infrastructure work in an org run by software-brained people is probably equally difficult.