Instead of addressing my questions, you went with the ad hominem and called me a sycophant. Nice one.
Love your generalisation about blogging and (alleged) punditry being a primary responsibility too - because clearly SO many CEOs take this responsibility in their stride.
I wasn't talking about "many CEOs", just Joel. If you bother to read his blog posts, you'd notice that he constantly talks about how he's delegated away a lot of decision-making responsibility.
He functions as the public face of his company. His companies' products are marketed towards developers, and I gather that most find out about them because of Spolsky's blogging -- he's a very effective salesman.
Love your generalisation about blogging and (alleged) punditry being a primary responsibility too - because clearly SO many CEOs take this responsibility in their stride.