Why are data scientists and staff level software engineers never promoted to the CXO levels?
Software employees especially data scientists, ML engineers and principal software engineers can be better CXO material compared to people from pure people management backgrounds, yet we see this is not the case. Sergey brin, Larry page, Bill gates also proved their mettle as CxO inspite being from purely tech backgrounds so why are the others like MBAs being promoted to CxO levels? Please comment
- There are plenty who do make it to C levels. Even Sundar and Satya came from eng background. - Lot of eng are not extroverts as it is not really factor in their jobs. But CxO is all about communication, body language and getting work done through others, which requires different skills. - For some it could be personal preference. C suite rarely does actual hands on work and there are many people who are capable of being in c level roles but just prefer to be hands on building stuff
Yes, i have seen many good, intelligent and peoples person SWE being suppressed due to a threat.
I did not find a single example of a tech CxO failing but many examples of non tech CxO failing.
Tech companies fail all the time but media coverage is mainly on the big fish which are relatively new kids on the block compared to non tech companies, hence we will see a lot more examples of non tech failures (the baseline is also much higher)
Even Microsoft almost went under until a real engineer became its CEO.
SWEs develop the product. CXOs develop the company which develops the product. It's different.
Engineers are not interested in big picture. They’re obsessed with details. That’s by design.
That is not true. Sometimes they don't want the engineer to think big.
there are examples of both engineers that have done well and poorly, eg ibm, microsoft
In most cases the personality and skillset that make a great engineer don’t necessarily match with those that make a great CXO. There are always outliers, but they are the exception rather than the rule. One of the most important skills to reach the top of the corporate world is ass kissing. You gotta know how to flatter your boss and make you look like an admirer rather than a threat to his job. Not too many engineers I know are good at brown nosing.
Many engineers don’t adapt well to managing people relationships. But there are exceptions and the engineers that can master relationships rise to the executive suite more often than not. Satya was a software engineer. But sometimes engineers are kept down intentionally when they become a threat to entrenched sales types who are already execs.