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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?

#211

Post by jasondigitized »

patentatt wrote: post #199
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You'd probably be the lawyer who can code and any lawyer-adjacent tech company would love you. As a lawyer who can code (years of experience as a professional software developer and years of experience as a practicing attorney) let me assure you, this is not the case. There just isn’t that much overlap, despite the common wisdom that such a thing should exist, it’s very hard to actually find. Also, not everything o…

We have lawyers embedded with PMs, engineers, and designers to build software that the legal industry loves. Come work for us.

https://www.csdisco.com/case-builder

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

#212

Post by mountain_peak »

kyberias wrote: post #206
onion2k wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. > Gates & Allen allegedly didn't do much actual coding themselves but they certainly understood it. What? Gates & Allen similarly wrote "a lot of early code". Gates also acted as a Chief Software Architect in his final days at Microsoft.

My understanding is that the last application code Gates was involved in was the TRS-80 Model 100 [1] circa 1982; I taught my kids assembly on the Model 100 and think it's great.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100#ROM_firmware

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

#213

Post by dnh44 »

TeeWEE wrote: post #193

Stopped reading after seeing this: "Amazon.com $1,432B Yes, Bezos" Bezos is not a programmer.

From his Wikipedia entry:

>In 1986, he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (B.S.E.) in electrical engineering and computer science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

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

#214

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

ls65536 wrote: post #196
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't remember where I read this (possibly even on HN at some point), but this reminds me of an interesting idea that has stuck with me over time... Consider two broad but otherwise generally viewed as unrelated (however, not mutually exclusive) skillsets: A and B. Lots of people are great at A and lots of people are great at B, but the intersection of the two is generally small (perhaps "law" and "programming" cou…

Yeah, this was Scott who creates comics (I forget the full name). His claim is that it's easier to be in the top 80% of two things rather than the top 90% of one thing.

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

#215

Post by analog31 »

I think the most striking thing to notice in that list is that the top 7 or so businesses are closely related to software. The article alludes to the fact that software is a big industry. And those businesses all seem to share a similarity, which is that they chose as their CEO the person who happened to have founded the business, or who owns / owned it outright.

These are also people who have figured out how to make software development work for them, not kill them. That's huge.

An interesting study would be to see how people with software engineering background (by some agreed upon definition) fare as CEO's of companies that they didn't start or own. Granted, that might take more time and study.

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

#216

Post by radihuq »

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 think that early Amazon employee you're referring to is Paul Davis[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=PaulDavisThe1st

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

#217

Post by vsareto »

harlanji wrote: post #124
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…

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.

The depth thing can be a bit misleading unless you've also been at or past that depth.

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

#218

Post by dnautics »

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…

> but they could all do intern or junior level stuff.

Almost certainly true, but would they pass the coding interview?

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

#219

Post by underdeserver »

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…

Gates & Allen didn't do much coding? Gates wrote most of the first version of DOS and lots of other software.

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

#220

Post by Zababa »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #214
ls65536 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember where I read this (possibly even on HN at some point), but this reminds me of an interesting idea that has stuck with me over time... Consider two broad but otherwise generally viewed as unrelated (however, not mutually exclusive) skillsets: A and B. Lots of people are great at A and lots of people are great at B, but the intersection of the two is generally small (perhaps "law" and "programming" cou…

Yeah, this was Scott who creates comics (I forget the full name). His claim is that it's easier to be in the top 80% of two things rather than the top 90% of one thing.

It's from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The term used is often "skill stack" or "talent stack".
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