I've noticed a similar effect from tall management hierarchies in my career. You end up spending hours every week making presentations to managers, working with managers to make presentations to higher-up managers, etc. Everything is done in terms of "What will Jim (the VP) think of this?"
At a large public company— I just don’t do it. Can’t remember the last time I made a slide deck. Has possibly limited my upward trajectory but I guess that’s the trade-off.
The reality is that it's usually someone who was a founder or cofounder and has the luxury of gambling money on a business. It's less an indicator that they know what they're doing and more that they had money to pay you to execute on their often flawed ideas and perceptions.
