I think it's more important for CEOs to be located in the same city as the company HQ than it is for any randomly selected employee to be. When VIPs visit the company, they expect the CEO to be present, not on Zoom. Plus, there used to be this thing where leadership had a more than tenuous connection to the legacy and culture of the businesses they ran, and even to the cities their companies were a part of. That's harder to pass off if you can't be bothered to go there. Imagine hearing a CEO say something like "I care about Company X" but they're saying it from a thousand miles away, over a Zoom call, while all their employees are on site and hating being there. That says something about work today.