Leadership is a thing. It really matters. An effective leader can be a force multiplier for everyone in the organization that reports to them, directly or indirectly. An ineffective leader can literally bankrupt an organization.
Kalanick is a dickhead who lasted a few years before getting busted for it.
Both Jobs and Gates really built shit for a very long time.
You might not care, but the Microsoft empire was real once upon a time. Gates was fucking good at his job for his entire career. Jobs had some ups and downs in terms of results. Putting Kalanick in the same category as either of them is really really weird.
All leaders are very quickly out of their depth these days given the scale, speed and complexity of today's markets and rates at which things change. What they can actually do, to be effective has reduced. Lot of them end up being lightning rods when things go bad. They know this and rightly get compensated highly for it.
This does not really change the fact that a focused, driven leader can impart a strong sense of company focus and vision that becomes a really powerful driving force. I've seen it, it's definitely still a thing and I don't see a great leader being less important anytime soon.