Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers? • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by hinkley » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #283

What a ridiculous question. The article itself explains it: software is swallowing the world. 7 of the top 10 companies by market cap are software companies (or closely related). Do bankers tend to lead banking companies? A cursory glance at the top-5 banks in the US indicates that to be the case. They were largely founded by, and are currently run by, bankers.

"Kid, never write software for a hardware company."

The reason I was given for this advice is that they don't understand how iterations work in software, and so they can grossly misunderstand your level of doneness. This is first a big headache and then a source of post-release problems because you end up rushing things out.

Getting more software-savvy people into management in more industries would definitely help with that.

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

#292

Post by lumost » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

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…

The top 5 entries on this list were all from founders who wrote a significant portion of their companies original code. Granted, Larry and Sergei maybe aren't able to code to the Google standard anymore - but they once did.

I don't see why it would be surprising that tech companies benefit from technical founders. When I see MBA/finance run companies my first thought is that they are almost certainly a finance, contracting, or marketing business even if on the outside they are a consumer product, mining, or manufacturing firm.

Many mature businesses benefit from a financial viewpoint as CEO as there are no major innovations or risks to be done that can't be reasoned about on a spreadsheet. Tech has been on the other end of that spectrum for the last few decades.

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

#293

Post by taeric » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #218

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…

> but they could all do intern or junior level stuff. Almost certainly true, but would they pass the coding interview ?

Underlining this point. The claim isn't that they couldn't work in the field. It is that they could have trouble in the interview.

I'm not clear why/if this is controversial. I thought it was well established that interviews are tough from both ends and that they suffer heavily from Goodhart's law.

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

#294

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

I'm sorry, but this is a ridiculous article.

If you actually want to show that software engineers wind up being more successful CEO's then you can't look at the top 10 companies, there is virtually zero statistical significance here whatsoever.

Instead, take a look at the Fortune 500 at a minimum (or better yet, all publicly traded companies). And then you need to rigorously define what makes a CEO "better" -- which isn't market cap. Indeed, it could trivially be the case that software engineers fail 10x as often as other founders, but that they found 100x more companies so they have more absolute successes.

The only thing that the top-10 shows is that there are a lot of tech companies in the top 10, and that tech companies tend to be founded by software engineers, while non-tech companies aren't. Which is... about as surprising as saying that mega-financial companies tend to be founded by bankers, or that restaurants tend to be founded by chefs.

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

#295

Post by notahacker » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

apatters wrote: post #182

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…

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.

Isn't the 'senior role' aligned with what he said though? He'd have the industry insight to design product roadmaps and UX wire frames in a PM type role, but wouldn't touch the codebase because he's a lawyer who wrote some code a long time ago, not a lawyer who codes, and the non-lawyers his team can hire have much more experience in actual software engineering.

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

#296

Post by munk-a » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

> You'd probably be the lawyer who can code and any lawyer-adjacent tech company would love you.

Being able to natively express and review logic related to some legal software would be useful indeed, but honestly your team will need someone good at gathering requirements from non-technical folks either way and my guess would be that a lawyer that can vaguely code would likely be retained as an expert in the field but offered compensation like an entry-level to mid- developer by a startup.

I think that SMEs are great to have on the team, and I'd happily jump at the chance to contract with one that's got some vague coding experience as well - but I'd contract that out to pick their brains specifically on their specialty rather than try and shoe-horn them into a dev role. If I found a lawyer that had returned to development full time that's a different jazz - but you also need to keep in mind if the now-lawyer that used to be a developer actually wants to go back to full time development.

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

#297

Post by asdfman123 » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

aeoleonn wrote: post #284

asdfman123 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, none of this is black and white. It's definitely possible for the less well-off to devote resources to passing meritocracy tests. It's just harder. It's not either or: 1) people should take more accountability for their own lives, but at the same time, 2) it should be easier to raise yourself up if you're less fortunate. If you're willing to overcome the obstacles you can accomplish nearly anything. I'm ju…

I agree with ya. But this statement: >" it should be easier " applies to literally everything in existence :P challenges are good-- they result in growth.

I a Wired article about a team of poor Latino high schoolers who won a prestigious submersible competition. Brilliant kids.

I don't think any of them became engineers. One of them ran a catering business, for instance, which is more in line with his background.

Is that growth?

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

#298

Post by JamesBarney » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #255

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'm not an expert, but my feeling is you'd need just three things to get back into Big Tech: 1) At least a year or two of experience at another programming job, 2) MONTHS of time studying whiteboarding, and maybe 3) A few good referrals. I know, because I'm 34 and I have 9 years of enterprise experience. I'm trying to get into Big Tech right now (I've interviewed with Google and Amazon and I'm about to do Facebook).…

> a class filter initially designed to not be a class filter: rich people can afford to study for months for free. Poor people can't.

I think whiteboarding problems can be silly but....

If you are applying to these jobs you either just graduated, in which case you just spent 4 years finding time to jump through all the hoops the professors gave you, surely you can find another 3 months to become an expert on whiteboarding problems.

Or you're a professional software developer. And the number of professional software developers who are good enough to work at Google or Amazon, live in the U.S. and are "poor" is a vanishingly small number.

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

#299

Post by rendang » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #143

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…

> hey aren't running Pfizer? Why not? Because there is no c-suite.stackexchange.com for them to cut-and-paste their corporate directives from.

I would love to see a parodic interpretation of the questions and answers one would find on "c-suite.stackexchange.com"

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

#300

Post by offtop5 » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

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 had the privilege of working under a CTO, who would personally write code for me when I got stuck. A big part of this was it was a smaller company, but even so I definitely think Hands-On founders make the best founders.

Because you can essentially hop in and fix something, even if your other engineers are but stuck. Plus knowing that you can personally increase your wealth by 6 million dollars with a couple of good lines of code doesn't hurt.