>If you gain your worth from being a CEO and the fact that you wield a degree of power in the context of a business, rather than, say, from intrinsic values, then you will eventually find yourself in a position of conflict.
As with so many writings with the themes of minimalism / zen / detachment / spiritual enlightenment / etc, the authors have a childish view of CEOs. Yes, there are lumbering corporations with middle managers climbing to CEO to satisfy "vanity". However, for HN audience, I don't think that's the type of CEO that's interesting to us.
>The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can focus on the things we can change. And there’s a lot we can change.
And sometimes to execute those changes, we have to be the CEO instead of being a cog in a wheel (aka "nobody") in somebody else's company. You sometimes have to be the owner/CEO of 10-person startup to be an agent of change.