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Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

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Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#31

Post by ceilingcorner »

replyifuagree wrote: post #27
ceilingcorner wrote: post #24

The problem with using market cap for tech is that Wall Street and the financial industry in general factors in too much "hype" and imagined future earnings into their valuations. This should be obvious to anyone that sees headlines of X Company with unreliable revenue model now valued at $50 Billion. If instead you look at industries which don't have as much of this future hype, they are much more competitive. Fashi…

I agree. For example, look at companies by revenue, walmart is #1 and the no software engineer at the helm ever right? Of course now take a look at this macro trends chart comparing walmart to amazon https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=revenu... Now tell me your best guess on when when Amazon will pass Walmart to take Fortune 1.

I don't doubt that Amazon will overtake Walmart, but I have an issue with calling someone the best CEO today based on a metric that is dependent on future projections.

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#32

Post by teitoklien »

replyifuagree wrote: post #13
sebmellen wrote: post #5

Does anyone find this methodology lazy, if not disingenuous? - Google/Alphabet's current CEO is a materials engineer [0] - Apple's current CEO is an MBA with a degree in industrial engineering [1]. Jobs, the founding CEO, was also not a software engineer. - Amazon's CEO, Bezos, was a software engineer [2], but it's widely known that he didn't do programming work for Amazon. I don't think he would consider himself a "…

Regarding Alphabet, the article listed Sergey and Larry, arguably the leaders who oversaw google's meteoric rise. There is a note about Schmidt as well. Pretty much same comment for Apple, it remains to be seen if Tim Cook is another Jobs/Gates or if he is instead a Ballmer. Regarding Bezos, if you read the article you will find that you actually made the one of the major points in the article with your comment about…

Remains to be seen ??

How many more trillion dollar do you need , to give Tim Cook his due credit for operational excellence

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#33

Post by replyifuagree »

teitoklien wrote: post #32
replyifuagree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Alphabet, the article listed Sergey and Larry, arguably the leaders who oversaw google's meteoric rise. There is a note about Schmidt as well. Pretty much same comment for Apple, it remains to be seen if Tim Cook is another Jobs/Gates or if he is instead a Ballmer. Regarding Bezos, if you read the article you will find that you actually made the one of the major points in the article with your comment about…

Remains to be seen ?? How many more trillion dollar do you need , to give Tim Cook his due credit for operational excellence

Operational excellence he gets all the credit for, just like Ballmer.

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#34

Post by helsinkiandrew »

Nonsense.

Many of the 'top companies' at the moment are youngish software companies, many still run by their founders or early employees, which include lots of software engineers.

If the current big thing was biotech the 'best' (ie most) CEOs would be chemists.

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#35

Post by replyifuagree »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #31
replyifuagree wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. For example, look at companies by revenue, walmart is #1 and the no software engineer at the helm ever right? Of course now take a look at this macro trends chart comparing walmart to amazon https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=revenu... Now tell me your best guess on when when Amazon will pass Walmart to take Fortune 1.

I don't doubt that Amazon will overtake Walmart, but I have an issue with calling someone the best CEO today based on a metric that is dependent on future projections.

My conservative guess is three years. How about revenue growth rate? That's now right?

Edit: one thing about revenue and profit is that there are businesses that operate off of graft that kind of throw a monkey wrench into those measures

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#36

Post by GeneBond »

bawolff wrote: post #4

Wow, talk about assuming correlation implies causation. I think the obvious lesson here is when society becomes reoriented around a new field (in this case software), people with experience in that field are going to do well.

I'm the author bawolff, and I completely agree that the success of software engineers as CEOs is correlation, not causation. The likely cause is that software engineers learn to discover value by running value experiments. Zuckerberg and Bezos are well known for their value experiments in production. I believe that the nature of pursuing new value, in effect, taught them this practice. And to the comment below, when it comes to oil, new value in the form of oil fields is also discovered. Prospecting for oil is one concrete form of the abstract pattern of discovering value, iterating in software is also prospecting for value. It's just that unlike oil, you can use software to prospect for all kinds of value very quickly.

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#37

Post by necovek »

sebmellen wrote: post #5

Does anyone find this methodology lazy, if not disingenuous? - Google/Alphabet's current CEO is a materials engineer [0] - Apple's current CEO is an MBA with a degree in industrial engineering [1]. Jobs, the founding CEO, was also not a software engineer. - Amazon's CEO, Bezos, was a software engineer [2], but it's widely known that he didn't do programming work for Amazon. I don't think he would consider himself a "…

I do, but for slightly different reasons.

Even if we did want to accept the definition of "better CEO" from the article, we'd need to look at performance over time: increase in market cap over their tenure.

Next, a cut off at 10 in an attempt to generalize is silly: why not top 1 when we are at 0%. Or top 2? Or top 1000? Top 10 is arbitrary and not telling.

And I am sure real data actually hides in the smaller companies market cap movement.

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#38

Post by GeneBond »

sebmellen wrote: post #16
replyifuagree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Alphabet, the article listed Sergey and Larry, arguably the leaders who oversaw google's meteoric rise. There is a note about Schmidt as well. Pretty much same comment for Apple, it remains to be seen if Tim Cook is another Jobs/Gates or if he is instead a Ballmer. Regarding Bezos, if you read the article you will find that you actually made the one of the major points in the article with your comment about…

Then they should revise the title to "Software engineers make the best founders." To your note on Bezos, the whole article makes no points about whether Bezos actually programmed or not, just that he thinks analytically and runs experiments. I mean, great for him! But this article isn't driven by any empirical data. Aside from its disingenuous claims about CEOs, it's a very emotionally written piece (doesn't feel lik…

I'm the original author, value is the organizing force of secular society in my opinion.

Read the potential value portion of article or read further about my understanding of value here: https://iism.org/post/glossary-value-76

"Economic value is also theorized to be the universal organizing force of secular society, and the nature of value is thought to be responsible for the emergence of the three dominant value management systems, each having proceeded out of its own particular value state. Individual contributors are often attracted to a particular type of value, and they are therefore intrinsically motivated by the unique properties of that value type. Often, humans perceive their own value to society in terms of their ability to produce or replicate a thing of value such as a meal, or concert, or a manufactured good. Others might perceive their value in terms of their net worth, and creative individuals might perceive their value in terms of their ability to discover new solutions or their ability to create new works of value."

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#39

Post by GeneBond »

ab111111111 wrote: post #30

What this seems to show is that CEOs in a particular sector often have expertise in that sector. And that Tech is currently the most highly valued sector as measured by market capitalisation. To find evidence of Software Engineers being the best CEOs overall you'd really need to find examples of them running non-tech firms successfully or examples of non-Software Engineers running tech firms poorly.

I'm the original author, and I certainly believe that there are all kinds of great CEOs. What I am saying in this article is that software engineering CEOs are breaking out due to the super-infrastructure that is software, and that guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are using software to speed the value fulfillment cycle -- see https://iism.org/post/glossary-value-fulfillment-cycle-68

Re: Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

#40

Post by ceilingcorner »

replyifuagree wrote: post #35
ceilingcorner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that Amazon will overtake Walmart, but I have an issue with calling someone the best CEO today based on a metric that is dependent on future projections.

My conservative guess is three years. How about revenue growth rate? That's now right? Edit: one thing about revenue and profit is that there are businesses that operate off of graft that kind of throw a monkey wrench into those measures

I don't think you have understood my initial point. Please, read my first comment again.

I'm not saying that Amazon won't overtake Walmart, but that tech companies benefit from future projections factored into their valuations, while other non-hyped businesses don't. If the argument is that "software engineers make the best CEOs", it seems more likely that companies in the software industry simply get higher valuations for the aforementioned reasons.

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