CEOs are hired by owners/investors for the explicit purpose of maximizing profits. If the CEO were instead, for instance, elected by the workers, or hired by a community cooperative, I think opinions of CEOs would be much higher.
In other words: it's not the CEO, it's the system.
If a CEO was elected by thr employees it would be like any other elected official, where it can swing widely from being excellent to awful because large numbers of people are not great at selecting quality leadership. Now a system where an employee elected board selects the CEO and the employees have the power to remove the CEO, that could be pretty solid.