Its strange that you take the names of CEOs and proceed to deduce that as a proof of them being good programmers. Most of them go to Ivy league engineering schools, and then Ivy league management schools. And then from there straight jump into management barely spending any time at all in engineering. And the whole reason why they do engineering is largely because they need a bridge course to get into a masters level management degree. Once you get into a Ivy league management school, going wherever from there is essentially a networking activity not exactly a great indicator of your engineering performance. It helps to have friends in high places.

Management positions have long been seen as replacements for IAS.

The 1% you talk about parse XMLs at Google and Microsoft. The 99% parse the same XMLs at services firms. The 1% thinks they are special because of a association with a certain Ivy league brand name.

Lets talk of the Indian 1% when somebody in a Indian university writes some thing the equivalent of a Linux, Perl or FreeBSD.

Lets not over glorify these placement agencies as some institutes of engineering excellence.

For what its worth the 99% what people generally berudge look down upon essentially is employed in Indias space programs that sends probes to mars and moon, built bulk of Indias pretty advanced tech defence infrastructure.

Only thing IITians are good at is self worship.