Top level engineers and other VIPs are people too. And it is often surprising how "low" they can get.

We may imagine the CEO of a large company in his throne room, only reachable through his servant and only for matters of utmost importance, billion dollar contracts and all that. And sure, there is that, but not just that.

You may occasionally find out that the guy who a replaced a defective Ethernet cable on the intern's computer was that CEO. Or the lead developer of a AAA game patiently explaining some basic functionality to a random gamer. A CTO may pick up a random support call. So Raymond Chen debugging an "obvious" problem in a .bat script, not at all surprising to me.

It has already happened to me that on a support call where I expect some underpaid grunt, find that the guy is really good, patient and friendly, only to end up discovering that I just talked to the one who built the whole thing. Makes my day when it happens.

It think that if I was some kind of VIP top level whatever, I would cherish these moments. Simple things, genuine human contact, away from the big responsibilities tied to my position. And even from a professional perspective, getting a feel for what happens down there is important.