Generated items for the Angular CLI are relative…
if you are in the root dir (or the source dir) you are perceived to be in the app dir…
~/me/foo > ng g c bar
// ~/me/foo/src/app/bar/bar.component*
~/me/foo/src > ng g c bar
// ~/me/foo/src/app/bar/bar.component*
if you are in the app directory or further down the folder structure you will generate to where you are…
~/me/foo/src/app/feature > ng g c bar
// ~/me/foo/src/app/feature/bar/bar.component*
~/me/foo/src/app/feature > ng g c ../bar
// ~/me/foo/src/app/bar/bar.component*
Note: if you try to generate into a dir that does not exist, it will error…
~/me/foo/src/app > ng g c a/b/c/d/e/f/g/bar
// Error