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There is no other company you’d say that about. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook was/is Apple’s CEOs. No one praises or criticizes the chairman of Apple or its CTO for

There is no other company you’d say that about. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook was/is Apple’s CEOs. No one praises or criticizes the chairman of Apple or its CTO for the company’s direction or vision. Most people wouldn’t even be able to name that person. Satya Nadella is MSFT’s CEO. He’s the one people talk about changing MSFT’s direction and vision. Not the chairman or CTO. Heck, when Musk himself bought Twitter he made himself the CEO? Were you claiming that the person driving the decisions and providing vision for the company for the first few months Musk bought Twitter was the chairman or the CTO?

danpalmer 3y ago
Exactly, the "tech" in "tech company", and the "technology" in "chief technology officer" are two completely different things. "Tech companies" are arguably just product and service companies with a particular pattern of how the products work or sometimes how the business models work. From that perspective, it makes sense that many of the people running them came out of the product side, or the commercial side.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
No. The CEO serves at the pleasure of the board and its chairman. They oversee the CEO. The chairmain is Musk. He's also the board. He makes the rules for the CEO. There's a clear agreement between the chairman and the CEO that the CEO's duties are operations and revenue. In this case, the CEO must sell the product(s) that the CTO creates. That is unusual for a CEO (mostly salesperson with OPS role), but not unexpected since she has no background leading a product or even creating one. In all the cases you cited, none of the CEO's reported to 1 single individual that owned any material piece of the company themselves. Therefore you are comparing apples and oranges, Which is why this article is insincere. Its a joke to think that the CEO of X would be like the CEO of every public company out there, when the CEOs role for X has already been stated publicly to be very different.

danpalmer 3y ago

Exactly, the "tech" in "tech company", and the "technology" in "chief technology officer" are two completely different things. "Tech companies" are arguably just product and service companies with a particular pattern of how the products work or sometimes how the business models work. From that perspective, it makes sense that many of the people running them came out of the product side, or the commercial side.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

No. The CEO serves at the pleasure of the board and its chairman. They oversee the CEO. The chairmain is Musk. He's also the board. He makes the rules for the CEO. There's a clear agreement between the chairman and the CEO that the CEO's duties are operations and revenue. In this case, the CEO must sell the product(s) that the CTO creates. That is unusual for a CEO (mostly salesperson with OPS role), but not unexpected since she has no background leading a product or even creating one. In all the cases you cited, none of the CEO's reported to 1 single individual that owned any material piece of the company themselves. Therefore you are comparing apples and oranges, Which is why this article is insincere. Its a joke to think that the CEO of X would be like the CEO of every public company out there, when the CEOs role for X has already been stated publicly to be very different.