CEOs are hired by owners/investors for the explicit purpose of maximizing profits. If the CEO were instead, for instance, elected by the workers, or hired by a community cooperative, I think opinions of CEOs would be much higher.
In other words: it's not the CEO, it's the system.
If a CEO was elected by thr employees it would be like any other elected official, where it can swing widely from being excellent to awful because large numbers of people are not great at selecting quality leadership. Now a system where an employee elected board selects the CEO and the employees have the power to remove the CEO, that could be pretty solid.
People are too short sighted and plainly put, fucking stupid, to govern themselves. That’s why democracy is kind of an inherently unstable system until one group manages to consolidate enough power to ignore the others
Deciding on a restaurant with a few people is easy. Deciding on a restaurant with a few dozen people is fucking impossible.
Humans were not meant to live in societies of more than 150 people. Our brains can't comprehend a nation of millions, just like we can't comprehend the vastness of space.
Democracy is bad but still the least worst system. The thing that people seem to ignore the most is that checks and balances are what make it great. A voting public is important but not the only important check on the system.
The juiciest part of market socialism is that when all the employees get a direct share of the business' profits, they are spontaneously incentivized to work efficiently and minimize waste.