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Some businesses are run by engineers and are really successful because they solve difficult problems really well. They have sales/marketing people, but their ma
by natnat 16y ago
Some businesses are run by engineers and are really successful because they solve difficult problems really well. They have sales/marketing people, but their main focus is in engineering. Google is a great example of such a company.
Other businesses are run by businessmen and are really successful because they can sell and market things that other people/businesses are willing to pay a lot of money for. They might have a few coders, but they focus on sales because their business is in exploiting the difference between the value some software brings and the cost it takes to produce the software. Oracle does this, and they're tremendously profitable, too.
Engineers make things. Salespeople get people to pay money for them. They're both necessary, but the importance of each really depends on the industry. It doesn't take a few thousand of the brightest minds in the world to make a mediocre database. And it doesn't take a giant marketing team to sell ad space through an auction.
But if you're going to change the world with new technology, you'll want a company run by engineers. If you're going to exploit a niche in corporate bureaucracy, you'll want lots of sales/business guys.
- mbm 16y agoDo you have any data to support your assertion, i.e, that companies with engineer CEOs are in aggregate more successful than those run by non-engineers? We can go back and forth anecdotally, but that doesn't mean much :-). You may very well be right, I'm just wondering.
- natnat 16y agoThat's not what I'm trying to say. I'm saying some businesses are more effectively run by engineers and others are more effectively run by MBAs. It depends on what the business is trying to do.
- GBond 16y agoI agree with your comment (both are needed in a established corp) but I also agree with what the article was trying to say but ultimately doesn't succeed in driving home. If the goal is to create a TECH STARTUP, the non-coding, "fear me. I am Wharton grad" MBA guy is the monkey (monkey == guy with commodity skills). Not the dev. And the whole irony is that a smart MBA would pick up on the fact that the tides have shifted in the current-day startup ecosystem and do something about it. A smart biz guy has 2 choices. One is to adjusting the idea to be more "biz-centric", making their inherit skill more valued to the startup. The other is to expanding one's own job description of the biz dev beyond just coming up with the the idea with the goal of directly making the dev's life much easier (like do some front end coding/QA). This article has valid points but unfortunately reads more like a "haha. Nerds Win!" jab.