If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.
I think you are misinterpreting what 'hard' means.
That makes it volatile, not hard. And the stakes are much less for volatility when you already have several cool million in the bank...
The CEO of an Ambulance company I know has about 500 staff, he's been doing it for 25 years, it all seems like a smooth operation but they're constantly facing issues. Labour and training problems, international actors that won't pay and their governments won't help, shipping problems, supply chain problems. Liability issues. IP issues with some special things they do. Orders come in batches, they might have a down year and possibly have to play people off. And I'm not even getting into the very basics of product development, financing the working capital i.e. the regular stuff employees do.
People who think CEO's just show up and wear suits and have meetings, and kiss up to the board ... I don't think have any exposure to what the job entails.
A CEO compared is a walk in the park. All those issues you've mentioned ("Labour and training problems, international actors that won't pay and their governments won't help, shipping problems, supply chain problems") are there in any business (even in a single person shop).
If you can avoid that, it must be a great job. Massive pay, no labor, people do what you say, and if you screw up the politics and get fired you’re still set for life.
The implications of this are not great.
-leading a company
-dealing with finances
-constantly making important decisions
As a hard job.
This does not explain how CEOs such as Fiorina and Elop can inject themselves into established companies, run them into the ground, and still walk away with lavish rewards. They are in a completely different category than ordinary Workers.
And even hard to get right matters little if you have a golden parachute (as many CEOs do). You can drive a company (or an entire sector) to the ground and still get your nice bonus.
Not that the CEO should be completely out of the loop (she has to sign off, after all).
But if a CEO is dealing with nitty, gritty details if finances there's a severe delegation issue at best and a detail obsessed control-freak at worst.
A European company with major cash holdings may want to diversify currency, but that could be seen as speculative. The working capital requirements and details of the revolving loans they have from the bank. The list goes on.
The value-adds from a good CEO are outstanding strategy, positive corporate brand creation, and investor/shareholder relationship management.
The first two aren't hard in the bureaucratic sense, but in the creative sense. A lot of CEOs are terrible at them - see the long list of companies run into the ground by very poor decisions.
The last one is helped a lot by having the correct class background. It's nightmarishly hard for outsiders, and can be anywhere from not hard at all to equally nightmarish for insiders.
No wonder a lot of top level executives are psychopaths, the emotional detachment must really help.
Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.