Eric Schmidt does wear a suit, that is true. But I always thought that the type of professional CEO chosen by yahoo and google essentially told the story of th

Eric Schmidt does wear a suit, that is true. But I always thought that the type of professional CEO chosen by yahoo and google essentially told the story of the future of the two companies. Eric Schmidt has a PhD in CS (according to wikipedia, he wrote his dissertation on solving problems in distributed computing). Terry Semel has a BS in accounting and worked in the entertainment industry for two decades (warner bros). I don't know much more about the two men, but I'm 100% certain that Schmidt did a colossal amount of programming in his day, and I really doubt that Semel ever did, though I can't be sure of this. This has to have a serious effect on the hacker culture. If nothing else, Google's choice sends a message to programmers that technical ability matters all the way to the top. Yahoo's says it doesn't, at least not enough to be a required attribute of the highest ranking person at the company.