You are phrasing this as most of these people were simply lucky to be there, when the reality is that most of these people are the reason why Amazon is the top dog in online retail...
I spent a long time working at Amazon. Pretty clear to me many people were right place right time. True world changing meritocratic talent is rare and the opportunities for it to even matter even rarer
Right place and time (era of cheap money) explains the majority of our so-called genius tech CEOs.
A handful of ideas from info theory coupled with government desire to hype nation state brand does not a genius make.
None of these people have established net new ideas. Just borrowing from Gödel, Shannon, Turing, and the like.
Computer networks put the visibility, routing of logistics within reach of the masses. But we’re obliged to preserve the meme of aristocrats knowing best.
Not just CEOs, a lot of upper management all over. My own employer just hired a bunch of ex-Microsoft & Google people who are hardly the sharpest pencils (other than politically) and it seems all about the name on the resume.