Directors see the business quarterly, through a board pack. The chief executive and chief financial officer see it daily, and they see the numbers before anyone outside the company does. When one of them buys on the open market, they are committing personal money against information advantage they cannot legally trade on, which is a deliberately uncomfortable position to take unless they mean it.
Size is worth reading relative to the person rather than in absolute terms. A chief financial officer putting a meaningful share of their own liquid wealth into stock says more than a founder-chief executive adding a rounding error to a stake they already hold.