generalize CEOs as terrible people regardless of how good they are at their job, how ethical they are, how much they risk, or how much they get paid

The opposite is the case, at least with sane people. There are of course always people who are just stupid and hate everyone who achieves more than they do. Those don't really count, though... there's no way you can argue with them anyway.

What the widespread hate among conscious people towards executives is about is the fact that they get paid hundred thousands of bonus per year even if they lost half of their investors' money in a poker game and spent the other half playing golf and during orgies on the company yacht.

Look, nobody (nobody who is sane) minds if someone who delivers good work gets a good pay. Good work requires good pay, otherwise where would be the incentive to deliver good work.

What people don't agree with is when some farker is responsible for losing their life savings in "totally safe" shady trades, and 2,000 people are laid off for economic reasons, but there's still enough left for him to withdraw 1.2 million. People also don't like to hear in the news that their hard earned money was used to pay hookers and cocaine at company events, and that nothing is done about it. On the other hand, if you're 2 months late with the technical inspection on your car, you're being fined. This can leave no other impression with the common man than that the entire so-called constitutional state is a joke.

What people don't agree with is when some farker abdicates after being found guilty of fraud and tax fraud, and just states "Oh, that's ok, I'll just pay my... uh... outstanding... tax". He then takes his leave with a compensation of 15 million, which he uses to pay his tax debt, and everything is forgotten, charges dropped.
Three months later, he has a ghostwriter publish a book about his interesting life (which a surprising amount of people buy...), and six months later he is the CEO in another big company, or advisor to a minister, or something the like.
Every other person found guilty of something much less severe would go to jail. That is what people are increasingly angry about.

What people don't agree with is when some farker takes up a public office, serves a total failure for 6 months and then sues the state because a mere tax-free 200k per year plus a free armoured car, two body guards, a secretary, and an office for life time is not enough (in addition to the already generous pension that he's getting anyway).

What the widespread hate among conscious people towards executives is about is the fact that they get paid hundred thousands of bonus per year even if they lost half of their investors' money in a poker game and spent the other half playing golf and during orgies on the company yacht.

I've only worked for one large (ASX50) corporation, and my anecdotal experience fits with this.

In two calendar days, the CEO would earn my entire year's salary. He had no idea how my branch of the company -- R&D -- worked, and didn't care to educate himself (unlike the previous owner, before it become a publicly listed corporation, who would walk the floors and know how all the gears of his company functioned).
The reports on which the executive board would base their decisions were so far removed from the actual day-to-day reality that it was impossible for them all to not be incompetent. They can't possibly know what's going on day-to-day on the working floors of the building from their vantage point (which BTW, involves 12 days of "work" per year), so they hire other incompetent executives to devise farcical metrics (e.g. the amount of "innovation" going on was measured only by number of patents filed -- having us file a patent on some abstract use of the 20-sided-dice showed up as more innovative than, you know, actually doing some real R&D). The result of such a large organisation is that it's left to the ground-floor staff to actually make sure that the ship doesn't sink, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to a company that punishes them for doing so, because such acts don't score well on their Key Performance Indicator metrics... It's these people's hard work that actually makes the company keep running and keep making profit, yet they've got to struggle and fight for an equal-to-inflation raise (unless they play golf, of course)...
Meanwhile, the socio-paths game the system and play politics with each other (my whole team once had no work to do for over a month, because my project manager's manager was being targeted for redundancy by another splinter-faction of managers as part of some useless grand political scheme to get some other incompetant candidate promoted) and it becomes impossible to discern incompetence from malevolence.
All the while, the CEO's contract is ticking down, and all he cares about is that end-of-contract golden-handshake bonus, which is based upon the stock price of the company at that point in time... which has the effect of incentivising shorter and shorter short-term profits as that date draws near, at the expense of logical long term growth strategies. Right before his date was up, he cancelled all future R&D projects and sacked half the staff, in order to maximally boost profits for that quarter. The result was the stock price bounced up slightly, he got a ridiculously massive bonus upon finishing his term as CEO (on top of his already ridiculous salary and regular bonus - I could live very comfortably for a whole lifetime on one year of his pay), and he moved on to the next company to be raped. Predictably, a year later, the stock price dropped by ~80% due to all forward planning being gutted, and it's the ground-floor staff who are blamed (and made redundant)...

That's why I don't respect these people, or the system which creates them. The whole thing is sick, and once you realise that, you can't help but be pissed off.