Lisa Su, Jensen Huang, Pat Gelsinger, C. C. Wei,
Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#22"Are just administrators" A bit of a casual comment. Current Twitter CEO was the CTO before. Satya nadella and sundar pihai both were fairly technical when they started. Even Zuckerberg won't fit your definition because he coded facebook initially in PHP/Mysql but what it is today is probably s lot more technically complex. And anyway, the job of a CEO of a large public company is not to be technically competent. The…
I think of technically competent as having been a hands on dev, Zuck at least did that during his time (like Gates in his day). Satya and Sundar were not hands on in terms of coding and were PMs in their respective companies before moving up the ladder. This makes sense for the CEO role, but if the question is technically competent CEOs, not sure they'd be representative, of course they have computer science backgrounds/education so it's debatable.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#23Lisa Su, Jensen Huang, Pat Gelsinger, C. C. Wei,
Those are the CEOs of AMD, Nvidia, Intel and TSMC for anyone like me who didn't know.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#24Patrick Collison (Stripe) helped develop the first version and seems to know how to code as he still talks about and shares what he works on sometimes on twitter.
Another famous YC company is Cruise, who had Kyle Vogt as CEO, who was very hands on as a programmer in various roles before that and talks about specific tech being worked on for autonomous driving.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#25"technically competent" is a broad word. would you classify Zucks as being "technically competent" about every single technology at Meta, just because he coded the og version of Facebook
There are few to no engineers who are technically competent at every technology at Meta or any other company.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#26"technically competent" is a broad word. would you classify Zucks as being "technically competent" about every single technology at Meta, just because he coded the og version of Facebook
The Zuck was in the just got lucky category. Facebook was the right product at the right time and he wouldn't be able to recreate that again. Look at all the garbage churn his company has spat out. It's only the acquisitions that have been successful and he spend a lot to buy the majority of stuff that totally failed. Google is exactly the same. Apart from search then really the only thing they got lucky with was gma…
Yeah because it's so technically easy to build a reliable global scale information architecture allowing thousands of people to reliably iterate on, test and deploy software simultaneously while it's continuously being accessed by billions of people and which is running on devices, operating systems, and programming languages you also created to make all of this possible.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#27Jensen Huang from NVIDIA
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#28Technically competent is a big grey zone IMO. For example, I am sure Musk knows the details, limitations and technical aspects of the welding that takes place at SpaceX, but my guess is he isn't competent to do it. That same example could be used for most of technology. I am sure Musk understands ML at a pretty solid level, but ask him to build or train a model and my guess is he wouldn't show "competence". I think t…
Why do you think Musk knows anything about welding or ML? I’m not saying he doesn’t, maybe he does, but that would be surprising to me.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#29What about Gabe Newell? He went from lead dev of Windows to creating Valve and Half-Life and Steam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Newell Or Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, who made the early shareware ZZT and Jazz Jackrabbit, then went on to create Unreal, the game and engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sweeney_(game_developer) (hey, cool footnote... I was pretty pissed off when they changed their game Fortnit…
I believe Gaben was a PM (or PM manager/lead) during his time at microsoft. Lead dev is a bit misleading, since he led program management and has been listed as the producer, not the hands on lead developer. Not that he's not technical, just wasn't coding or leading technical development like a Carmack.
Thanks for the clarification! I was paraphrasing Wikipedia there. I don't know enough about his history to correct it for sure there.
Re: Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
One person I'm inspired by is Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and CEO of the dating app Bumble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Wolfe_Herd When she was younger, she was kinda a bleeding heart type, selling tote bags and clothing to benefit environmental and human rights causes, then working in an orphanage. She went on to become the VP of marketing for Tinder, but left because of sexual harassment. She went on…
I'm not sure if I would consider the societal effects of Tinder and Bumble as positive and inspirational. If anything is has impaired gender relations, lead to the massive spread of STDs and arguably made the world a worse place. And regarding Wolfe Herd herself, it's the eternal question, how "self-made" can one be as the child of a very wealthy and well-connected property developer of Jewish background? How many fr…
I dunno, I think any social app like that has its pros and cons. I met many amazing women on them, including my current partner, and also exes that I still consider dear friends. You don't have to use them just for no strings attached high risk sex if that's not your thing. It never was mine, but I still met some really cool people on there. Certainly a less toxic place than, say, Facebook or reddit... less of a herd mentality when you're just meeting one on one, I suppose.
But sure, they can have downsides too. I actually just got a check in the mail from Bumble because they were subject to a gender discrimination class action suit for prohibiting men from messaging first. And some of my female friends had terrible issues with overwhelming spam and dick pics on those services (part of why Bumble was a hit), along with guys just being assholes in various ways. I never had a bad experience with them, myself, even though the dates didn't always work out. You get out of it what you put into it.
As for Herd, a lot of CEOs come from privileged backgrounds and it's not something we fault them for. Even given that privilege, very few go on to found companies that become household names. And still fewer end up even remotely decent people. For every Herd, there's a hundred Larry Ellisons and Bernie Madoffs and Weinstein, predatory sociopaths out to exploit everyone around them.
If Herd's only crime is that she grew up privileged, eh, that doesn't seem so bad. She had to face many challenges her male peers didn't, just on account of her being an ambitious woman.
I think self made in this context just means she actually had to work for her wealth, as opposed to being a straight up heiress like Paris Hilton.