HACKER Q&A
📣 dev_0

Who are the technically competent CEOs in tech world?


Besides Elon Musk. I know Apple, Google and Twitter CEOs are just administrators.


  👤 solardev Accepted Answer ✓
What about Gabe Newell? He went from lead dev of Windows to creating Valve and Half-Life and Steam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Newell

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)


👤 gus_massa
Old but good, there is a nice post by Joel Spolsky about Bill Gates https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev... Strangely, it never has a big discussion here.

👤 davismwfl
Technically competent is a big grey zone IMO. For example, I am sure Musk knows the details, limitations and technical aspects of the welding that takes place at SpaceX, but my guess is he isn't competent to do it.

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.


👤 codegeek
"Are just administrators"

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.


👤 mikeodds
John Carmack just founded a AGI startup and raised 20m. Not sure if he’s wearing CEO title but arguably technically competent.

👤 dbish
Patrick Collison (Stripe) helped develop the first version and seems to know how to code as he still talks about and shares what he works on sometimes on twitter.

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.


👤 kidgorgeous
"technically competent" is a broad word. would you classify Zucks as being "technically competent" about every single technology at Meta, just because he coded the og version of Facebook

👤 ksec
Lisa Su, Jensen Huang, Pat Gelsinger, C. C. Wei,

👤 jacklar
Tobi Lutke @ Shopify

👤 chaosbutters314
Lisa su is more competent than musk.

👤 aprdm
Jensen Huang from NVIDIA

👤 aborsy
What are the examples of the best contemporary CEOs (technical or not)?

How about founders?


👤 Victerius
The job of a CEO is not technical competence.

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.