Also, the article is referring to founding CEOs, and hence referring to Page/Brin and Jobs/Wozniak, not Pichai and Cook.
[0]: From Cook's Wikipedia article: After graduating from Auburn University, Cook spent 12 years in IBM's personal computer business, ultimately serving as the director of North American fulfillment.
Also, needless to say, Jobs was not a software engineer either.
> *Wozniak obtained a master’s in computer science in 1987 and does code. Though Jobs was brilliant and technically savvy, Jobs clearly didn’t professionally code; he did contribute to creative and technical designs
"Contributing to creative and technical designs" does not make you a software engineer. LOL. Might as well give my grandmother the moniker as well (she's contributed to some creative designs for my startup).
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Also, it's a terribly written article. I mean, this is content-marketing level, https://shortlyai.com type of stuff.
> Conversely, traditional CEOs are regularly incentivized and seduced into pleasing financial markets by having higher returns in the near term. This typically overhyped mission of “improved earnings” occasionally results in companies pursuing unsustainable schemes that are focused on boosting quarterly profits (liquid value).
Software engineer CEOs do this exact same thing, probably more so! (Mostly as an artifact of their Silicon Valley VC investors pumping them into SPACs and IPOs to get a fat payday.)
They paint a picture of non-software-engineer CEOs as idiots, which is completely idiotic. Most successful companies throughout history have not been founded by software engineers. This is a recent phenomenon and the article's author(s) have no idea what they're talking about.
In terms of title? No. In terms of function? Well sure, he's a co-founder.
In a small company, every person has enough influence to rival the CEO and every role overlaps enough that the distinction given by titles is meaningless inside the company. Mainly the distinction given by titles determines how people market themselves outside the company where the dividing roles will appear clear for marketing purposes, which they are not in reality.
The article actually refers to Jobs & Wozniak.
My view having known quite a few engineers who got MBAs (outside of the software world) is that it very much marked a point where people had decided they wanted to stop being a practising engineer and wanted to be someone who managed practising engineers (directly or indirectly).
I was already managing a team before I got it. After I got it I've had a mix of roles as both engineer and manager. I didn't intend to switch track, it's more about being better at both tracks.