I don't think the marketplace makes a distinction between "good" and "bad" CEOs with regards to pay, compensation, and rewards. Stock valuations are speculative and a declaration of faith that you can sell the stock for more than what you paid. Good leadership is often unrecognizable until there's a crisis.
That's roughly true. And there's a good reason behind it: Its very difficult to tell when someone will be a good CEO. Hell, its really difficult to tell when anyone will be actually great at the job they're being hired for.
At least with an engineer, you can be hired by someone who could more-or-less do the job you're being hired for. Senior engineers hire entry-level devs. The CTO hires team leads. Who hires the CEO?
Often, there's no one in the company who is adequately prepared for that role, because the role doesn't have a job description. It doesn't have bullet points of what you do every day. Your job is to lead the company, set the expectations, set the results, for everyone else. That's the role of the c-suite.
