I think it's more about transitioning from the founder-type CEO driven by vision to the maintainer-type CEO who only cares about pleasing the board to keep his position as long as possible.

Reminds me of Cook after Jobs.

Tbf while Cook doesn't have the product vision of Jobs, he does have a clear strategic/what we want Apple to be vision. He's a post founder CEO for sure, but one of the best and a different league from Pichai by all accounts.

Ballmer was employee #30 at microsoft. While not technically a founder, he had been with the company 20 years out its 25 years of existence before becoming MSFT's CEO.

like Apple's ceo

Also from a founder to someone who had risen through the ranks as a manager & executive.

+1. It takes a certain kind of people to raise through the ranks like that, so you automatically filter out people who might be more akin to the original founders. Vision _might_ be an asset when rising through the ranks, but pleasing superiors, hitting metric, politics and luck probably overwhelm it.