Comment by drb311 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drb311 | Hacker News Reader

"Google is a technology-driven company -- one founded by computer science prodigies who have hired more than 50 computer science Ph.D.'s."

In 2002 this was weird.

Internet entrepreneurs were not expected to be compsci Ph.Ds back then.

AVC discussed a new kind of tech CEO recently:

"The new tech CEO archetype is a computer scientist who got into product management early in their career, led large product teams at a big important tech company, is in their 40s, and has great taste in technology, tech talent, and most of all tech products."

Google was one of the first internet businesses to succeed big with computer scientists at the top, leading product.

EDIT, again:

Google is quite a different beast from Sun, SGI, or Viacom. You might disagree but that's OK. Somebody is always wrong on the Internet.

2002 was shortly after the dotcom bubble. Nobody knew what was going on or going to happen. The rise of computer scientist lead consumer-facing tech companies would have surprised people who had expected Pets.com to rule the world.

As the NYT article noted, Google was swimming against the tide at the time. History has proved them right.

I'm not sure Google was that unusual...

Of the 6 founders of Excite, 5 were Stanford computer science graduates.

Jerry Yang and David Filo, founders of Yahoo, were electrical engineering graduates (thus very tech oriented).

Alta Vista was started by some electrical engineers and computer scientists from DEC.

Inktomi was started by Eric Brewer who was an electrical engineering and computer science professor.

I'm sure there are more.

EDIT:

As the NYT article noted, Google was swimming against the tide at the time. History has proved them right.

It should be mentioned that Sergey and Larry recruited Eric Schmidt as CEO in 2001. Eric is a hugely capable computer scientist, but he also had a proven record as CEO at Novell. In essence they brought in a 'business guy' who they trusted with the technical aspects of Google.

That does blow a hole in my argument... but what lead NYT to observe that Google was 'flouting dotcom tradition', if stocking up with (and being lead by) CS PhD's was the norm?

NYT writing about normal things does not help NYT sell more papers. This applies to any newspaper. Most articles are overhyped.

Many tech companies were lead by non-tech guys, but most were so flash-in-the-pan you don't even remember them. My father consulted for several would-be tech companies during that time, all led by business types, that didn't last.

Also Hewlett-Packard, named after the founders, two Stanford graduates.

Not Ph.D.

I imagine the graduate degrees Hewlett and Packard earned at Stanford were, for their time, at least equal in prestige to a Stanford Ph.D in 2000.

Assuming Wikipedia can be believed:

Hewlett - 1939 Stanford "degree of Electrical Engineer"

Packard - 1938 Stanford "master's degree in Electrical Engineering"

Stanford has been awarding EE Ph.D.s since 1919, and Stanford's prestige as an engineering institution didn't really begin until after Terman became Dean in the 1940s and began pulling in substantial government research grants.

I still agree with cfield here. There were, say 1% of the population with master degrees, and 0.2% with a Ph.D. 50 years later, there are maybe 5% of the population with master degrees, and 1% with a Ph.D. Numbers are invented, but something like that could prove that H&P's degrees were comparable to today's Ph.Ds.

SGI was pretty big.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics,_Inc.

Or this SUN company.

You're right. I should have said "first internet businesses", and now I have.

I could still be totally wrong, but at least now it's genuine ignorance not a typing mistake.

pg made his money in an Internet business:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb

I see you've cranked out a blog entry with your beliefs:

https://medium.com/@drb/the-computer-science-driven-start-up...

Google was really part of the second wave of successful internet businesses, including search. Yahoo was going public as Google was getting started. Inktomi was worth over 20B at some point, in fact I was there when the company had an opportunity to acquire Google and said no.

Correct link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics

>Google was one of the first internet businesses to succeed big with computer scientists at the top, leading product.

Sun Microsystems?

edit: ah "Internet" business.

"edit: ah "Internet" business."

Well - SUN was the dot in dot com, remember?

Interestingly enough, Jeff Bezos of Amazon has a computer science degree from Princeton. He's such a fierce competitor and tough negotiator that somehow his geek credentials were completely overlooked by the business press.

Intel, founded in 1968, has founders with PhDs. They were not PhDs in computer science (formally) but on related fields.

There weren't very many PhD programs for Computer Science in 1968. A quick Google search reveals the first US Computer Science Phd was awarded in 1965.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenneth_Keller

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