Ask HN: Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?
Besides Elon Musk. I know Apple, Google and Twitter CEOs are just administrators.
Or Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, who made the early shareware ZZT and Jazz Jackrabbit, then went on to create Unreal, the game and engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sweeney_(game_developer) (hey, cool footnote... I was pretty pissed off when they changed their game Fortnite from an early cooperative PvE version to the PvP Battle Royale, emailed him and complained, and he personally replied with a thoughtful letter and then gave me a full refund... thank you, dude).
(And yes, of course Carmack, but someone mentioned him already)
That same example could be used for most of technology. I am sure Musk understands ML at a pretty solid level, but ask him to build or train a model and my guess is he wouldn't show "competence".
I think technical competence is also different then "could do it", e.g. I think Musk, Zuck could sit down and figure out most software related tasks. But it isn't a good use of their time. They have a good enough understanding of the technical limitations and requirements to lead people in product creation which has proven immensely valuable.
I think the channel was 'Everyday Astronaut'.
I'm not an expert so perhaps it's a case of I'm easily impressed.
A bit of a casual comment. Current Twitter CEO was the CTO before. Satya nadella and sundar pihai both were fairly technical when they started. Even Zuckerberg won't fit your definition because he coded facebook initially in PHP/Mysql but what it is today is probably s lot more technically complex.
And anyway, the job of a CEO of a large public company is not to be technically competent. They just need to understand technology.
Another famous YC company is Cruise, who had Kyle Vogt as CEO, who was very hands on as a programmer in various roles before that and talks about specific tech being worked on for autonomous driving.
Google is exactly the same. Apart from search then really the only thing they got lucky with was gmail. The rest is a graveyard of garbage.
Maps can be replaced in most cases by Apple Maps, but I haven’t found a competitor for Flights.
Live near a major airline's hub, and commit to only using that airline. Then things are easy.
It's hard to provide a better flight search than that provided by a company that runs a GDS, although Travelocity didn't leverage it very well when they were part of Sabre. (Travelocity did have a calendar based flight search tool, working mostly from fare rules, but heavy caching made it frustrating to use when availability was limited, and FTC wanted them to get prices complete with all fees, which was apparently too complex to add later, so I think it was discontinued; we had to discontinue the cobranded version at Yahoo! Travel anyway)
How about founders?
When she was younger, she was kinda a bleeding heart type, selling tote bags and clothing to benefit environmental and human rights causes, then working in an orphanage. She went on to become the VP of marketing for Tinder, but left because of sexual harassment.
She went on to create Bumble, teaming up with a Russian billionaire (that part is admittedly shady). Within a few years, she herself became the youngest self-made female billionaire.
Since then, they've been getting mixed press... allegations of sexual harassment at the office (https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/07/08/exclusi...), a paid week off after COVID (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/22/dating-app-bumble-gives-work...), etc.
Overall I just think it's cool to see a woman who didn't grow up in tech get pissed off at the misogyny and forge her own path in reaction, despite all the doubt and vitriol she faced along the way.
And regarding Wolfe Herd herself, it's the eternal question, how "self-made" can one be as the child of a very wealthy and well-connected property developer of Jewish background? How many free attempts at entrepreneurship would she have had until eventually something panned out?
But sure, they can have downsides too. I actually just got a check in the mail from Bumble because they were subject to a gender discrimination class action suit for prohibiting men from messaging first. And some of my female friends had terrible issues with overwhelming spam and dick pics on those services (part of why Bumble was a hit), along with guys just being assholes in various ways. I never had a bad experience with them, myself, even though the dates didn't always work out. You get out of it what you put into it.
As for Herd, a lot of CEOs come from privileged backgrounds and it's not something we fault them for. Even given that privilege, very few go on to found companies that become household names. And still fewer end up even remotely decent people. For every Herd, there's a hundred Larry Ellisons and Bernie Madoffs and Weinstein, predatory sociopaths out to exploit everyone around them.
If Herd's only crime is that she grew up privileged, eh, that doesn't seem so bad. She had to face many challenges her male peers didn't, just on account of her being an ambitious woman.
I think self made in this context just means she actually had to work for her wealth, as opposed to being a straight up heiress like Paris Hilton.
Knowing how to work the computers is not the only valuable or difficult skill. Managing a large company is not something a software engineer could do.
That is essentially saying that people who are software engineers have only one set of skills.. which is just false obviously.