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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?

#171

Post by UncleMeat »

tinco wrote: post #80
GeneBond wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm the original author. The point of the article is as follows: there is clearly a trend towards top market-cap companies being founded by software engineering CEOs, but why? The data regarding the trend is pretty clear. I believe there are two reasons: 1. Software has become a global form of super infrastructure that facilitate scaling, but there's more going on. 2. I believe that guys like Zuckerberg, Bezos, M…

8/10 companies on your list are software companies, of those 7/8 have software engineer CEO's. The only thing you've shown is that successful software companies are often led by software engineers. I bet you'll find similar patterns in other industries. Who better to have visionary leadership than an engineer who grasps the industry perfectly. I'd love to believe that software engineers make better CEO's in general,…

Yeah this has nothing to do with engineers having magical brains. This is 100% caused by tech companies being worth gazillions.

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

#172

Post by necovek »

Grustaf wrote: post #75
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…

> it remains to be seen if Tim Cook is another Jobs/Gates or if he is instead a Ballmer No that doesn't remain to be seen. Tim Cook is clearly one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Compare Apple now to Apple when Jobs died.

If Apple ends up tumbling down in the next, say, 5 years, with Cook still at the helm, what would that say about Cook as the CEO? To me, Apple seems to be in the Microsoft's home-run stretch where they dominated the market with 99% desktop penetration for a while, but no clear "where next".

Apple certainly won't fall because of their sheer size and momentum (just like Microsoft never did), but we look at things differently at that scale and for a while, Microsoft was "stagnant" and "backtracking".

I don't know how people define "most successful CEOs of all time", but I do know that predicting future is a fool's errand (you can go into statistics and risk evaluation, but here we are talking about one person thus not much room for "statistics": I mean, everyone who's hugely successful but then hugely fails has been mostly hugely successful right until they failed).

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

#173

Post by harpiaharpyja »

The first thing that comes to mind is that correlation is not causation.

The author says nothing to address that. In fact, not far into the article they effectively state they're just going to assume that his hypothesis is correct and then proceeds to hunt for reasons why. This raises all kinds of red flags for me.

I'm sure you don't have to look far for a common cause explanation of the hypothesis.

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

#174

Post by morelisp »

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…

What is this bizarro world where Gates didn't do much coding but Zuckerberg bootstrapping a PHP CRUD app would get him in the door at today's Facebook?

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

#175

Post by dcolkitt »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #149
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…

You are assuming a lot. Many stanford phd's fail the google interview. I'd guess larry, sergey and zuckerberg had a pretty good chance of failing their own swe interviews...

The dirty truth is that most whiteboard industries are heavily loaded on raw cognitive ability. Sure, it’s ostensibly about data structures, but what it’s really about is fluid intelligence. Gates, Zuckerberg, Larry, Sergey and Bezos all have extremely high intelligence, and would most likely pass with ease.

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

#176

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

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.

When we think "programming", we think FAANG but in the real world, there are thousands of places that need basic code slung.

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

#177

Post by mathattack »

The answer seems too obvious to state. Companies with SW at the core need someone who knows what’s feasible. Same reason why Berkshire Hathaway (on their list) has a Financier at the core - they’re in the Capital allocation business. It’s why most law firms are run by a lawyer. And why most research universities presidents have a PhD.

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

#178

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

mettamage wrote: post #151
mrwoggle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and there is not a serious place on earth that would let me touch their codebase. If you have already a CS degree and you spend a couple months refreshing your memory, you would be amazed what codebases you can touch.

They won't let you touch it. I've sent out more than 100 resumes and got in at only two despite having a bachelor + master in CS. The one company that I got in severely underpaid me. This is in NL and I might be an outlier, but I'm beginning to see a problem. I also applied (in secret) when I got the job, my odds didn't improve.

Send me a copy of your resume, check the profile.

Although NL might be a place where there isn't a lot of programming market, I'd be willing to bet the resume needs a bit of work.

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

#180

Post by bjarneh »

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…

> and there is not a serious place on earth that would let me touch their codebase.

You'd be surprised...

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