If you love technical work, QUIT being an exec, a VP, a manager... do the work.
You WILL have a crazy time getting back into tech work, after 10 years, even if you were hands on the whole time.
Management / CTO and everything in between is best served by people who are technical, and are ready/aware/willing to move into a deeply political and financial driven domain.
I hated it, but it took me a years to really let that sink in and feel it hurting me.
If you can short circuit that wasted time. Do.
Being on the other side of the fence has really helped me move around, I still to sysadmin/DevOps type work but mostly moved into product and I've found it really helps.
Too many C level see product as only UI/UX and the teams I manage appreciate my understanding of the pain points for everyone
All their direct reports just seem to accept this lot in life, everyone else does their best to avoid drawing their ire. I imagine that maybe something will happen and they will get the picture and actually grow as a leader. It's growing old though and I miss being on a team wherein this wasn't the day to day morale.
Maybe they'll read this. Maybe it's you. Please take this seriously. You could do better.