Frankly what the CEO actually does day-to-day doesn’t matter relative to a startup or a publicly traded tech company, or anything in between in the scope of ownership and organized employee value.

I’ve watched a company in deep debt spiral out of control because the CEO didn’t understand the business and let bottom up management be how the company runs. The board that also didn’t understand the business just let 3 rounds of layoffs occur before forcing the CEO out. When layoffs come, if it is going to be the employees who pay the price, they should have a mechanism to push the pilot out of the seat before it costs them.