Depends on whether you want to be like Microsoft under Gates or Ballmer. Of course Ballmer could never had grown Microsoft well enough to begin with to even gi

Depends on whether you want to be like Microsoft under Gates or Ballmer. Of course Ballmer could never had grown Microsoft well enough to begin with to even give Ballmer himself the size of opportunity we would be so aware of at this point anyway. Not that Gates actually graduated from an engineering school, but he had the technical chops to out-engineer most of those who did in the ways that count. This allowed Microsoft to overcome hurdles that could not have been passed any other way, even as Gates participated to a much lesser degree in the actual engineering details of the products over his years. Cats are best herded by other cats. At least Ballmer had been with the company almost as long as his technically qualified predecessor, and that was since almost the beginning. When HP failed on these points too it was even less pretty. Seems like from large engineering company scale down to single engineering project scale, one trend for success might be when the leader is actually inherently capable of virtually all of the engineering needed for a successful product. Just when the project, product, or company is too big for this technical leader to accomplish all or even any of the engineering single-handedly, is when the judicious delegation of the technical fragments becomes the valued talent that non-technical operators also have an extreme disadvantage with. It's more financially sound if the leader when needed can solve technical problems that his team alone can not overcome when they arise. Even if the company is started because of a businessman's vision of a market he makes come true, if it is largely an engineering company, the technical leader needs controlling interest or the shareholders will be shortchanged. This usually works the other way around, which is why we hear about far fewer of them becoming sizable regardless of how amazing the engineering seems sometimes. There simply needs to be a way for the non-technical but gifted business talents to earn enough to be more rewarding than what they would experience having more control of a lesser pure sales company without the engineering talent. So the engineering does need to be outstanding, exactly what some of us are here for.