It might have something to do with the fact that marketing people are on the phone a lot and engineers have to focus a lot.

Wherever I've worked the engineering team always locked the CEO away from themselves because he's a huge distraction.

Typically, the CEO is "locked away" in a spacious corner office and the engineers have to make do with cubes.

If the CEO never had to meet people from outside the company, I'm sure his office would be less spacious.

And if engineers never had to concentrate and focus to get their work done, I'm sure their workspaces would be open to auditory and visual distraction. Don't think for a minute that the typical business allocates these resources based on practicality rather than status.

Businesses exist to make money, not to serve as a bed for some perverse status assertions. Not saying that the latter ones never happen; just pointing out the basic facts.

Most human social behavior is "a bed for perverse status assertions", business included.

The CEO's I worked for, incidentally, tended to spend at least half their time flying around the country, leaving the spacious corner office empty more often than not. Is that really the most pragmatic solution? No, just an artifact for signaling "I am the boss". It's not like it's something people stop to think about when designing office space. And when it is, it says something interesting about a company.

Most CEO's I've worked with were startup CEO's and were locked away in the smallest most uncomfortable corner somewhere because the engineers reigned supreme and needed to get shit done on their dual monitors and needed plenty space for laptops and stuff.

I'm not questioning the good sense of this arrangement, but I find it an interesting glimpse at the balance of power at the company.