> There's no easy answer, as many engineers do not have the soft skills for the role. But arguably, they could run these businesses themselves. I like most of

> There's no easy answer, as many engineers do not have the soft skills for the role. But arguably, they could run these businesses themselves. I like most of this comment, but this I always think this perspective completely misses the point. No matter how technical your role is, working with other people is always going to be the most important part of your job. No matter how technically talented you are, your ability to deliver value to an organisation is going to be strictly bottlenecked by your ability to work with others. This is especially true for leadership roles, where success or failure in the job is almost entirely decided by people skills. You can have a technical founder who understands the product perfectly, and the understands the market perfectly, and has a brilliant strategic vision. But if they can’t lead people effectively, if they can’t represent the business to the public, if they can’t develop trust among the customers, then they have basically none of the skills required to run the business.