She was also an outstanding student at Stanford and one of the first employees at google, which might have also helped. And this isn't hearsay but a well established fact.
She's clearly unusually talented as a developer, a researcher, and a teacher.
Unfortunately those aren't the skills needed to be a good CEO. It takes a certain kind of political and strategic insight, and she doesn't seem to have an unusual amount of that.
To be fair not many people, including many other CEOs, do. But it's easier to hide that when you're running a sort-of ok corp.
It's hard to hide it when you're in charge of a patchwork of milliproducts, some of which are strong on their own, but which together are worth less than the sum of their parts - and you need a plan, and can't think of good one.
