Why engineers make great CEOs

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-opportunities/why-engineers-make-great-ceos/article5984318.ece

by Navarajan • 12 years ago

90 57 12 years ago

jokoon• 12 years ago

china comes to mind: aren't many chinese leaders former engineers ?

ttflee• 12 years ago

IMHO, it was because the engineering departments of the universities were less ruined (than humanity/history/law departments, roughly, though they were not categorized like they are today), during the Great Cultural Revolution between 196x-1976, which were not fully restored until early 1980s.

Although the engineers are broadly parts of the intelligentsia community, they are kinda 'useful', and it was theorized that the worker-peasant-soldier students[1] were politically trustworthy, many of those students were sent to universities to fill in the blanks, and many of them became engineers(, and career as a worker in an industrial factory, together with residential records, or Hukou in a city was quite desirable then).

Now that China has been led by people who were born in 1950s or earlier for years, they were quite likely to be in universities during or after the Cultural Revolution years. It wouldn't at all be surprised that some of them were trained as engineer(, but diverted to administrative paths during career).

[1] http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=J5QbQpQTegwC&pg=PA124&lp...

rtpg• 12 years ago

This is probably the disconnect between the definition of engineer in anglo-saxon terminology and in other countries.

France notably has most of its management come from the Grande Ecoles that give out "engineering degrees". But they end up only spending about 2 of their 5 years on their specific domain, and a good chunk of their time on business management classes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles

derekjobst• 12 years ago

Perhaps this is not indicative of a rise of engineers who become interested in management, but individuals already interested in management (or are of that mindset) choosing to get a degree in engineering instead of Business. Given the tremendous value of an engineering degree, especially as a guaranteed high level of income, it makes sense practically minded managers would prefer such a safety net.

bottled_poe• 12 years ago

So, an engineer can perform managerial work with limited formal training... You seem to be implying that a business degree has little value.

sergiosgc3• 12 years ago

As an engineer with an MBA, I can tell you that an engineer breezes through the hard sciences part of management. It's all about modelling, and that's the core training of an engineer. The social sciences aspect of management is not so easy, but if there is underlying aptitude/informal training present, the jump from engineering to management is not that hard.

zenbowman• 12 years ago

It's not that it has little value, just that it is extremely easy for someone with an engineering mindset.

I took a single class at the USC Law School on Constitutional Law. It was considered a brutal general education class, but myself and some fellow engineers in the class found it absolutely trivial. Turns out case law has many similarities to formal logic.

An engineering education gives you a huge toolset with which to model and solve different kinds of problems, a toolset that non-engineers simply do not possess.

_delirium• 12 years ago

This is getting common in law as well, because patent law is lucrative, and having an engineering degree is an asset for practicing in that field. So people get an engineering degree not because they are really interested in engineering, but because it's a useful add-on to a lawyer's CV.

weland• 12 years ago

Given the tremendous value of an engineering degree, especially as a guaranteed high level of income, it makes sense practically minded managers would prefer such a safety net.

Practical experience (of a practicing engineer) shows that the value of an engineering degree outweighs that of one's work only in the first couple of months, or even weeks, on a job. The skills of incompetent engineers are in significantly less demand than that of incompetent managers (sadly). Unlike an MBA, the engineering diploma isn't worth the paper it's written on the moment people realize you're clueless. It's not a very good safety net :-).

judk2• 12 years ago

That level of basic incompetence is not in scope for a discussion of CEO candidates.

justinpaulson• 12 years ago

How is an MBA any more than just paper if you are clueless??

rayiner• 12 years ago

There's no "rise of engineers" becoming interested in management. FTA: "In fact, engineering long has ranked as the most common undergraduate degree among Fortune 500 CEOs."

Out of the top-20 MBA programs, STEM undergraduate degrees are about as common as business/economics undergraduate degrees: http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2009/11/20/which-undergrad-ma....

nbevans• 12 years ago

This bodes well for NewMicrosoft and Nadella.

jasode• 12 years ago

A high-profile counterpoint is RIM engineer and (former) CEO Mike Lazaridis. Even after seeing the Steve Jobs iPhone demo in 2007, his engineering and logical mindset was convinced that businesses would not adopt a device without a physical keyboard and that push email was more important than an apps ecosystem. He didn't see that the consumer engagement with iPhone was so compelling that the user would do an end run around the corporate IT departments (by buying the device on their own) and kick off the BYOD movement.

But setting aside some business missteps, it seems like engineers/CEOs are better for companies (especially tech growth companies) than MBAs. It was after all, Lazaridis' background that helped RIM achieve so much success that they could afford to pay $600 million to NTP in 2006 and also be in the competition with iPhone.

UK-AL2• 12 years ago

A lot of MBA's are also engineers. I think the biggest chunk of MBA students are engineers.

collyw3• 12 years ago

I personally would prefer the physical keyboard option, but we seem to have touch screens forced upon us. (I know there are a few models out there, but none were offered on the contract I asked for).

I am unable to answer the phone around 40% of the time (before the caller hangs up), due to the stupid swipe gesture I need to do. A physical green button was orders of magnitude more usable and reliable.

DougWebb• 12 years ago

I can't upvote you enough. The only smartphones I've gotten have been in the Motorola Droid family because of their fullsize slideout keyboards, and like you I still miss the physical buttons for basic phone functions.

username42• 12 years ago

I think that becoming an Apple follower was the misstep of RIM. RIM was the leader on the market of professional phones with keyboard. I am a geek, I need a phone with good keyboard and good battery life (big touch screens have a negative impact on battery).

collyw3• 12 years ago

"the life of an engineer, it seems, is not as rosy as originally anticipated".

Ok this affects me at the moment. Why? Because I have two incompetent bosses. Basically I have junior / intermediate level programmers telling me what to do (and getting paid more than me for it). They took the promotion for the money. I do the "smart" work and make the technical decisions (when they make technical decisions they are often poor choices, basically from lack of experience).

Its at the point that I am going to take the next management position that comes up.

romanovcode• 12 years ago

I do the "smart" work and make the technical decisions (when they make technical decisions they are often poor choices, basically from lack of experience).

I believe everyone thinks they're the only one smart, special snowflake.

collyw3• 12 years ago

My team leaders suggest options and they are usually either very poor design decisions (like I would have made in my first couple of years of coding). Or they just don't know.

Maybe I sound arrogant, but when you have to override 75% of their decisions for something better, then I think I am more experienced than them.

Then there was having to dig onto code written and commented by them.

   # open file 
   file.open(filename)

It honestly looked like one of the blog articles about how not to write comments.

dmpk2k• 12 years ago

Companies that have any technical workers must have at least two promotion tracks: management and technical. It's downright stupid "promoting" someone into a position where their skills and affinity cannot be fully utilised.

Consolations.

awinder• 12 years ago

That sounds like maybe a failing for these particular managers? I guess every company is different, but it sounds like your managers may be failing to delegate properly, and you end up with a corporate structure where every step up the pyramid means doing what all the previous levels do, plus more. Often that has pretty detrimental effects from failure to properly delegate, but it doesn't have to be that way. That might be a trap that managers who were engineers have to work harder at to not fall into.

sergiosgc3• 12 years ago

You've been the victim of the Dilbert Principle in action. It is quite common. Do not jump to management because of this. Jump companies. Some seem to avoid the Dilbert Principle, although I know none that escapes Peter's Principle.

shankysingh• 12 years ago

Personally, I feel people make "great" CEO not specifically one group .

Jugurtha• 12 years ago

From all the great Engineers who've ever lived, the author couldn't think of anyone else but Thomas Edison, Henry Ford...

With all due respect, when I read "engineering's long and glorious history", I have other names in mind.

thampiman• 12 years ago

Marc Andreessen at SS '11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9phm2ae0Ss&feature=youtu.be...

"The engineer who can become an entrepreneur, who can then become a CEO... there's something magic about that formula"

AlexC04• 12 years ago

Except when they're not.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roth_(businessman)

Roth was an engineer who oversaw stock schemes and false accounting such that he was able to completely wipe out the company. (Nortel was one of Canada's largest companies and now its gone)

Disruptive_Dave• 12 years ago

"They’re detail-oriented, analytical and trained in systematic problem-solving. Engineers’ basic qualities make them good candidates for the top."

There's a significant element missing in this line of thought and it involves emotions/people. By this reasoning, a robot might also make a damn good CEO.

_xczx• 12 years ago

If robots performed to the calibre of hyper-rational beings like Jeff Bezos, then you would be right - robots would make damn good CEOs!

shubb• 12 years ago

There is some truth here. In a large organisation, the people running it will not understand the problems they are solving as well as the people under them.

The Head of Sales (US) understands the US market better than the Director of Sales, who understands it better than the CEO. So, the CEO can make an impact by choosing people, understanding their motives, skills and the relationships between them, and giving them a chance to shine.

When a new president is elected, and imposes policies he came up with in opposition without access to treasury data and expert advice, something is wrong. Shame it happens every time. Big company CEOs are trying to make money, not get re-elected, so they should manage not do.

joncrocks• 12 years ago

Robot CEOs! What a good idea!

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

But then who would we give exorbitant compensation to?

this_user• 12 years ago

I'd argue that being too detail-oriented may be a bad quality for the average CEO. The CEO's job is first and foremost to see the big picture, develop the grand vision and general roadmap and then hire the right people to delegate implementing the details to. There are people who can do both and those are the truly great CEOs. But unless your name is Jobs or Bezos, you probably shouldn't try to do it.

ScottBurson• 12 years ago

I was with you until the last sentence. Great CEOs may not be found on every street corner, but there are a lot more of them in the world than two.

viscanti• 12 years ago

While being detail-oriented, analytical and trained in systematic problem solving might help in some cases, the bigger benefit is the training/experience in changing levels of abstraction. At the CEO level, you need to be able to quickly and easily change the level of abstraction that you're thinking about. Sometimes you need to be able to think about long-term industry trends, and other times you need to be able to zoom down to a very specific issue and you need to be comfortable with the nuance that issue involves.

programminggeek• 12 years ago

A lot of engineers would make terrible CEOs because they don't understand the basic tenants of business. Most software engineers don't like charging appropriately or spending appropriately on things that make the company money. There is a huge aversion to sales, marketing, and advertising.

If the CEO doesn't make sure the company makes money, the company will fail. I see this a lot in smaller companies. Larger companies probably don't let engineers get to the higher ranks unless they can make the company serious amounts of money.

Ultimately a business is about making money, and the CEO has to make sure that happens. Otherwise, you aren't much of a CEO.

UK-AL2• 12 years ago

However an engineer would be hard to bullshit to in those areas. They would focus on the numbers, and try to calculate returns.

thenmar• 12 years ago

The flip side, of course, is the non-technical CEO walking down to engineering and shouting, "We need more money! Double the number of lines of code you are producing!"

imgabe• 12 years ago

tenets

Although if your business happens to have tenants, you should understand those too.

thomaslangston• 12 years ago

Ultimately a business is about whatever the owner says it is about. Money is the lifeblood, but not always the purpose of the a company.

Great COOs and CFOs make sure that lifeblood is vibrant, while CEOs can focus on executing on the company's designated purpose.

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

I'm of mixed minds about this. On one hand, if your CEO isn't smart enough to appreciate engineering, R&D, and the cultural needs of high talent, you'll never get anywhere. The long-term result of having a business-driven technical organization isn't having a lower talent level. It's losing all the talent.

On the other hand, it's really simplistic to assume that engineers are "the good guys" and that having an engineer-turned-CEO will guarantee an engineer-driven organization. There are plenty of self-hating, Benedict Arnold engineers who'll gladly sell technology out to management. For some reason, a substantial portion of the engineers who become executives are that kind, and I don't know why, but it gives the good engineers who move into leadership a bad name.

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Engineers think the world would be a better place if only Engineers were in charge. Marketing types think a good customer sense is critical to the top job.

Its like government - military men think a military leader is needed; business wants a businessman etc.

I think the best leader would be - a leader. Someone who gets competent advisors, makes decisions and inspires the crew to do their best.

dworin• 12 years ago

I've found that many organizations tend to have a 'dominant function', and CEOs tend to come from that function. So if engineering calls the shots in your company, or is the main driver of success, the CEO tends to come from engineering. If the company is driven by sales, the CEO tends to come from sales.

That's why you see so many oil company CEOs who are geologists or engineers, tech company CEOs who are developers, and CPG CEOs who are marketers.

Tyrannosaurs• 12 years ago

There are national trends too - the UK will draw from finance more than many countries, Germany from Engineering. If I had to guess I'd imagine that the US was more likely than many countries to have CEOs with a marketing or product background.

AndrewKemendo• 12 years ago

US seems to draw heavily from the "Law" function, with equal parts MBA.

_mulder_• 12 years ago

Which explains why there are more Engineers in the 'top 50 Companies'; because most of the biggest, and most valuable companies, are Engineering based in some way, either by manufacturing a product (Cars, Planes, Computers), applying Engineering (Mining, Metal, Oil) or reliant on technology to perform their business (Telecoms, Internet).

The big exceptions would be Finance, Logistics, Business Consultancy or Conglomerates.

jofer2• 12 years ago

It doesn't dissuade from your point at all, but as a geologist in the oil industry, it's rare to see a geologist in upper management.

(One big exception: Tony Hayward, who's was also one of the few energy-industry CEOs to have a STEM PhD. (CEO of BP during the Macando/Deepwater Horizon blowout.) Other exceptions are mostly very small, exploration-only companies.)

The truth is, though, that the oil industry hires very few geologists in proportion to the number of engineers. (This is true even if you disregard the entire "downstream" refining and marketing half and just stick to exploration and production.)

The most common job function for most oil and gas companies is building or maintaining physical infrastructure of some sort. (e.g. wells, production facilites, pipelines, refineries, etc) Therefore, oil companies hire mostly engineers, and most oil company CEOs are engineers. (Once again proving your point.)

nostrademons• 12 years ago

My sister's a petroleum geologist. She's said that there's a big supply/demand imbalance for geologists in the oil industry - universities will graduate only about 1/3 as many geologists as the industry needs over the next 10 years. Geology's one of the least popular of the STEM majors, and among geology college students, the oil & mining industries are often seen as "selling out to the man", since many geologists also tend to be environmentalists and the oil industry is...well, not.

She's perpetually overworked as well, which squares with a supply/demand imbalance. You'd think that this'd just lead to higher salaries - and by her accounts, her employer basically does throw money at her - but the fact that petroleum geologists are paid pretty well hasn't yet filtered down to university students choosing their majors.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

Friendly reminder that Herbert Hoover was an engineer.

jasonwocky• 12 years ago

I can't tell...is this supposed to trigger some sort of a contradictory-to-the-article emotional response? Look, I don't doubt that there are many terrible engineer-CEOs, but I wouldn't use Hoover as an example.

First of all, CEO != POTUS.

Secondly, in the words of Harry Truman, "don't you ever cast any aspersions on Mr. Hoover because he's done some very important things for this country and the world."

e.g.:

Early in 1946, when large parts of both Europe and Asia were threatened with famine, Truman made Hoover honorary chairman of a Famine Emergency Committee, and in that capacity Hoover traveled 35,000 miles to twenty-two countries threatened with famine. As a result of his recommendations, the United States in five months shipped more than 6,000,000 tons of bread grains to the people of hungry nations.

- Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman

Not to mention a lot of successful food relief efforts he drove during and after the First World War. How do you think the guy got elected President in the first place?

Hoover did have leadership skills, it seems in particular the problem-solving kinds that a successful engineer-CEO might bring to the table. His political policies and the times he lived in just didn't intersect well.

Aaronontheweb• 12 years ago

Engineer-turned-CEO here.

Engineering teaches you a lot of the analytical / architecture skills you need to build and run organizations, but you won't be ready to lead until you learn a decent amount of the other business functions that make up just about every company.

You need to learn how marketing works, but not just the basics - learn what type of people are good at each role, what are the types of roles you need for different types of marketing strategies, some of the tactics for each strategy, etc...

Rinse and repeat for sales, operations, finance, product (different from, but aligned with engineering), and general strategic stuff like legal, recruiting, release strategy, fund raising, investor management, and so on.

Here's the good news: you don't need to be an expert in all of these areas when you get started. You just need to know enough to know which questions to ask and then surround yourself with advisors who can help answer them.

If you've ever built a new product (doesn't literally need to be a commercial product) from scratch and actually gotten people to use it, then you're probably already capable of thinking strategically - that's the first core ingredient for dealing with the market / product / economic challenges tasked to CEOs.

The second ingredient is the empathy and people-management part... This means being able to internalize concepts like e every employee is different, values different things, and therefore might need / expect different things from you - some employees might deeply care about working on interesting projects; others might care about being able to work in a specific time / location so they can maximize the time they spend with their family; some might care about money; but in my experience overwhelmingly most employees just care about feeling like their work is meaningful and appreciated.

Learning how to build an organization out of people who all have different personal priorities, levels of experience, backgrounds, and personalities is not trivial. You basically need to develop a high degree of self-awareness about your own needs and values as an employee first. And once you're able to do that, it gets a lot easier to recognize and understand what others need.

TL;DR; - there's a big menagerie of different things you have to learn to be a CEO, and engineering can help you structure the process of learning them but it's not enough unto itself. Develop a strong sense of self-awareness, a good advisory board, and the humility to ask for help when you need it.

Why engineers make great CEOs

Related Stories