To become a senior executive at a large company you have no choice but to stop doing real work and devote your time 100% to internal politics, because you are competing for a limited number of promotions with people who will do that. The real work skills of a “heavy hitter” atrophied long ago... and all the politics of their former employer won’t help them in their new job unless they can import all their cronies too... basically there is NO reason to ever hire one of these types.
Yes, that's basically the same as having a lot of cronies. But alas the market is what it is, it pays off to sometimes hire one of these. (Look how Google hired their CFO a few years ago.)
