But, when you have the opportunity to work under an excellent CEO or CTO you will learn that they do bring 10x or even 100x the value you bring to the team.
The same can be told about OP who claimed that they work 5-10 hours a week but their performance reviews have consistently ranged from mediocre to great. The point is, the hours you work is not an indicator for the value you bring to the team.
- Connections: industry, hires, investors
- Investing themselves into the company (bringing capital to help you grow)
- Domain specific knowledge. Hopefully they know the industry better than anyone.
- Management. Do not underestimate how far good management can go. It can really be a productivity multiplier - but the other way is true, too. If you have bad management, you're going to kill productivity.
Using your parallel, I think it'd be more fair to compare
> CEO + 300 software engineers, sales people, product managers
> 400 software engineers, sales people, product managers in a flat structure
I tend to think that the former would be more efficient, because otherwise we would be seeing at least some organizations of the latter type outcompeting the former on the free market. We don't, with 1-2 exceptions.