Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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