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"They do it by making bold career moves over the course of their career that catapult them to the top."

"bold career moves", i.e., right place at the right time, a.k.a., dumb luck

Yup. Survivorship bias. For every one of those there are 10 who were in a) The wrong industry, b) The wrong business model, c) The wrong product, d) The wrong collaborators (you know, the ones that cannot be easily removed even if you wanted to.) So much luck involved. I equate it to bands, for every Beatles there are 100s of unsuccessful solo artists who started out every bit as talented as Paul & John. Eventually the really good ones do make it I think, but not the way they expected, and not as one of these CEO sprinters.

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