I worked for a large, late stage, Softbank backed company. They brought in some C-suite execs while I was there. A CTO paid several million annually with large, public company experience. They were totally clueless, and the engineering org was almost revolting within 6 months, trying to stage a coup to the CEO. No technical experience, no leadership, installing cronies, speaking in opaque platitudes.

I'm not angry about it, though they did oversee us being on the cusp of a promising IPO to a pretty bad outcome that cost me a lot of money, but I'll say that any illusion that you have to be competent to be a C-suite exec, and any imposter syndrome I ever had, went out the window after that. Ironically it increased my personal confidence, if these idiots can do it I certainly can.

I think the old saying "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" kinda applies to some execs maybe, like nobody gets fired for hiring some stellar resume exec with lots of experience, but they may get fired for taking a chance on an upstart.