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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?

#181

Post by baremetal »

isamuel wrote: post #134
harlanji wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can call yourself a developer if you do a startup. I distunguish SEs based on how deep they go. Developers can throw up a house in the suburbs. An engineer might be needed to extract water or something specific. CS is a good qualifer for an engineer, while a developer can be the neighbor kid.

This is a better way of putting the point I was inelegantly grasping at. The neighbor kid is just an industrious kid---they happen to be nailing up drywall, but it's not that nailing up the drywall is why they end up running Berkshire Hathaway (or whatever) later. It's that they're industrious, and have various other traits that---in some other context---would result in them doing whatever else. Maybe they turn into…

not to be pedantic but drywall is screwed in not nailed. i happen to be a software engineer who has also built actual houses.

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

#182

Post by apatters »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #176
isamuel wrote: post #109

All of the people on this list are "software engineers" in the sense that they have some rudimentary education in the field. Almost none of them could get a job as a software engineer at their own company, if they had to, because they would be completely unqualified. And I'm not looking down my nose at anyone: I have an undergraduate degree in CS, but I got it 16 years ago and then went to law school, and there is no…

> I have an undergraduate degree in CS, but I got it 16 years ago and then went to law school, and there is not a serious place on earth that would let me touch their codebase Interestingly, you might be wrong. There's a continuing push to get people in the industry who can code for startups wanting to disrupt the space. You'd probably be the lawyer who can code and any lawyer-adjacent tech company would love you. Wh…

Absolutely, he probably would not be the right hire to squeeze an extra 0.1% of performance out of Google search, but on any team which has to understand the needs of the legal industry (plenty of these at FAANG and non-FAANG companies) he could find himself in a senior role very quickly.

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

#183

Post by onion2k »

tinco wrote: post #160
onion2k wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am assuming a lot, but everything I've read about Larry, Sergey and Zuck tells me that they're pretty exceptional people (even if that doesn't extend to their coding ability, which I have no idea about). They're people who are driven, focused and hugely ambitious. If they don't have what it takes to pass a SWE interview then there's little hope for the rest of us.

I think the point is, that even if they are intelligent and capable and definitely contributed a lot to their initial codebases ( I don't know why you singled out Gates, but he most certainly did as well), all of these companies grew to the point where almost any code change requires a bunch of expertise with technologies that they probably have not been exposed to. I don't know if they wouldn't get hired, I mean it'…

But they probably couldn't be hired as drop-in experienced SE's.

That's exactly what I said in my first post - "I doubt any of them could drop in to a high level coding role and be productive, but they could all do intern or junior level stuff."

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

#184

Post by necovek »

xiphias2 wrote: post #47
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…

I just bought an M1 Macbook Pro (my first Apple laptop) because I didn’t have anymore reasons to stay with PC. For a long time I was looking at Macbooks like shiny overpriced gadgets, but with its 20 hour lifetime, great screen and performance, amazing touchpad, while Windows 10 being buggier than Windows 7, I stopped having reasons not to switch.

I always found the "overpriced" theme on Apple hardware curious: it always sounds like people are comparing with "wrong" PC hardware.

Whenever I was buying a new laptop, I've only considered MacBooks because they did one thing I cared about a lot (high resolution displays in portable machines), and they were usually cheaper[1] compared to laptops I went for (lately X1 Carbons: worse performance [lower TDP CPUs], better battery life, worse but acceptable screen, keyboards way ahead — in essense, better keyboards and Linux compatibility + nicer design [personal take :] for worse performance and pricing on par or worse than MacBooks). M1 Macs now win even on battery life too, so it's going to be even harder to stay away from them going forward.

Still, keyboards and Linux compatibility will likely keep me in the HP/Thinkpad business lines for longer, but pricing is not the factor when it comes to choosing Apple computers or not for some jobs.

[1] Configuring a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 8th gen brings the Linux + i7-10610U 1.8GHz/16GB RAM/1TB SSD/2560x1440 screen up to $2022 today (down from "retail" price of $3140, which I hope nobody is paying anywhere, ever), and for roughly that money you get a 13" Macbook Pro with i5 ("up to 3.8GHz"), 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and a 2560x1600 13" screen.

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

#185

Post by lbblack »

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 "…

Yup! Lazy work gets lazy solutions!

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

#187

Post by some_random »

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 "…

Yeah, this seems more like "why are software companies more successful". Looking at only the top 10 companies then speculating seems like a waste of time, why not just omit the data entirely at this point?

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

#189

Post by Alex3917 »

onion2k wrote: post #147
isamuel wrote: post #109

All of the people on this list are "software engineers" in the sense that they have some rudimentary education in the field. Almost none of them could get a job as a software engineer at their own company, if they had to, because they would be completely unqualified. And I'm not looking down my nose at anyone: I have an undergraduate degree in CS, but I got it 16 years ago and then went to law school, and there is no…

Almost none of them could get a job as a software engineer at their own company, if they had to, because they would be completely unqualified. There are 10 CEO level people mentioned. Woz could certainly get a job at Apple. He's clearly brilliant and capable. Larry & Sergey could definitely get jobs at Google. They were PhD CS students at Stanford (how on Earth is that "unqualified" to you?). Zuckerberg could get a j…

> Zuckerberg could get a job at Facebook. He obviously wrote a lot of Facebook's early code.

That doesn't mean he could do leetcode problems.

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

#190

Post by UncleMeat »

Number157 wrote: post #88
sebmellen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that doesn't make him a software engineer. And he never practiced as an engineer either [0]. I know plenty of people with physics degrees who ended up in accounting and people with arts degrees who ended up in software. Your degree doesn't determine your career or what you actually end up doing. [0]: From Cook's Wikipedia article: After graduating from Auburn University, Cook spent 12 years in IBM's persona…

> Also, needless to say, Jobs was not a software engineer either. The article actually refers to Jobs & Wozniak.

Woz was a cofounder, not a CEO.
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