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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?

#221

Post by lgsilver »

GeneBond wrote: post #36
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…

Okay, but this is a function of the medium not of the people. Crafting successful feedback loops has defined great leaders across industries for hundred(s) of years. A bent toward experimentation is not something that software engineers possess. It's a trait that great leaders build into their businesses.

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

#222

Post by dogma1138 »

tener wrote: post #119
dogma1138 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what would that be exactly?

I'd argue that it forces you to think clearly about problems. You cannot write a program unless you understand exactly what you want it to do. In contrast typical CEO excels at creating tons of meaningless fluff. Perhaps mathematics or philosophy may have similar effects on people's ways of thinking?

This is not a reply to you personally well not just but to everyone else...

A) I think you greatly underestimate what other engineering disciplines bestow not to mention require

B) Really? Have you seen modern software development practices? barely functioning MVPs, vertical slices, pivoting and hacks galore....

Like personally I would wager that most programmers do not understand exactly what they are building when they start, I know I don’t always and I never really met anyone who does so either at least not constantly. You know the general direction then you tend to hack things until they work and optimize and fix edge cases as needed.

We very much can write programs without understanding what we need to do or even how things work otherwise we wouldn’t have bugs that are not hardware errata and even then one can argue that if you truly know what you are doing you plan for hardware failure.

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

#223

Post by dogma1138 »

kuu wrote: post #54
dogma1138 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what would that be exactly?

For me it's at least the following: - Attention to detail - Control of flow (if this then that) mentality - More binary thinking - Precision when describing (programming does not allow ambiguity) - A lot of frustration tolerance :) That's at least my experience

> Precision when describing (programming does not allow ambiguity)

Really? Should we count how many bugs happen due to type conversion, precision errors, off by one etc?

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

#224

Post by sudhirj »

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.

You mean better than 99% of the population in two things together, rather than better than 90% in one. As in it's easier to be a top 1% percent programmer-laywer because there are so few of them, than it is to be a 10% lawyer or a top 10% programmer.

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

#225

Post by ido »

underdeserver wrote: post #219
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…

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

I believe you are thinking of Microsoft BASIC? MS-DOS was bought by microsoft from another company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS#History

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

#226

Post by sixQuarks »

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.

When software is eating the world, this is exactly what we should expect to see.

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

#227

Post by mempko »

zheng_qm wrote: post #84

Internet Boom (Confounder) / \ / \ / \ Software Engineers ----> Successful CEOs

Thank you for using a causal diagram. A tool so few understand but so many can benefit from. Cuts to the heart of the argument and eliminates all the bullshit.

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

#228

Post by ekam »

jasondigitized wrote: post #211
patentatt wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Your “careers” page is 404’ing FYI

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

#229

Post by AlwaysRock »

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 mean, come at it from the other direction: Why are there so many software engineers who are not successful CEOs?

Mick Napier who founded and runs The Annoyance where many famous comedians studied over the years, comedians who Second City would claim as graduates of their program like Tina Fey and Chris Farley, said they he doesn't like clamming taking the credit for successful graduates unless he also takes the credit for all the unsuccessful.

That has always stuck with me.

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

#230

Post by dilDDoS »

ekam wrote: post #228
jasondigitized wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your “careers” page is 404’ing FYI

Looks like they need to update their careers link from "careers-old" to "careers".
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