I wonder if, looking at these examples, BigCo's are actually doing Tech a disservice by promoting the fuck out of high performers until they reach such a senior level that they don't need to do anything no more. I guess my concern is that these folks could have been accelerating the pace of tech even more, but are basically sitting out committees, managing others, and in general not making the kind of ground breaking progress they would have made otherwise.

Kind of reminds me of Feynman's view of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study; he viewed the institution as the place where good people went and stagnated.