Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?

Post by Number157 » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

fivecour wrote: post #81

GeneBond wrote: post #25

Hi, I'm the original author. It's late for me, but if you have questions or comment for me, I will get back to you in the morning. The article has to do with this idea: "Software engineers deeply understand that you iterate your way to value through hundreds of failed attempts.” I by no means think software engineers are smarter or more virtuous. What I do think is that the high rates of fail from writing code teache…

Why software engineers in particular then, if scientists, inventors, artists, and many others are also known for iterating through and learning from their failures? I also agree with others who said limiting analysis to the top 10 seems arbitrary, especially when you're covering mostly just the runaway outliers despite having the general overall claim of "why are software engineers better CEOs?" Does your analysis st…

Post by draklor40 » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

Post by 533474 » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

Number157 wrote: post #85

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 "…

> Google/Alphabet's current CEO Current, sure, but he showed up after Google was already successful. Becoming the CEO of Google made him successful, but he didn't make Google successful. > Apple's current CEO... Same thing. > Jobs, the founding CEO, was also not a software engineer. True but he co-founded it with a software engineer (Wozniak) who was arguably influential enough that he had the influence of a CEO if n…

Post by mola » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

Post by diegoperini » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 10:02 AM UTC

infinity0 wrote: post #87

From the slew of negative nitpicky comments here, it seems that Hacker News has been taken over by MBA and not technical types. Yes the nerds you looked down on in high school are doing way better than you, no hard feelings. :) I agree with the article, but there's also a much simpler answer. To be successful in a world-changing sense, you have to actually care about making a good product. People get MBAs to make per…