In general it's true for all positions. A CEO should be fire-able for the board to keep them accountable. We never got to the size where we had a board tho, so we didn't have anyone to appeal to apart from the investors directly, and as I mentioned, the CEO kept us isolated from them.

The bigger problem I had with lack of control was when things started to go south. The CEO was never around, so I was the "boss" in the office every day, being the technical and cultural leader of the dev team, who came to be close friends. Once the money stopped coming in, it was really hard emotionally to be the person who needed to convey that to the rest of the company, but without having any real control needed to get them money or real answers.

The CEO came from a very wealthy family, and never had to worry about money. Myself, and most of the employees weren't so lucky, and were pretty new out of college, so didn't have a pile of savings to fall back on. I am not even that upset about never seeing that pay I was owed, it was more just emotionally draining to be seen as an authority figure, but to have absolutely no ability to exact change or get answers when they mattered most.