[Infinitesimus]

No way. A CEO is held responsible for the decisions of EVERYONE under him/her by the board. A lousy programmer will cost the company a lot less than a lousy CEO.

The CEO is essentially the face of the company when things happen (good or bad) and has huge responsibilities. Managing a company is easy from the armchair.

[cgore]

That's a better way to see it. It's hard to see good management and its effects, but good management really does make a major difference. But it is so hard to see, that people sometimes don't even realize they need it. But to see the ability management has to change the outcome, look at bad management: they can totally destroy a company, no matter how good the engineers are. That people can see.