[mdorazio]

There are so many cherry picked data points and unfounded assumptions in this article it's hard to even pick where to start rebutting it. I'll just pick the most obvious one: if you limit your data set of companies to tech, of course you'll find that engineering-oriented CEOs outperform. But tech companies make up only a fraction of the total population of businesses in America.

Also it annoys me when authors don't even try to state what it is CEOs actually do, and what skills are necessary to succeed at those things. If you've got more than few couple dozen employees, it's not engineering...

[imhoguy]

MSFT stock price graph killed it.

[arcturus17]

Yea, two things immediately came to mind

(1) Ballmer, whether you like him or not, probably planted at least some of the seeds of the “new Microsoft”

And more importantly:

(2) The tech market as a whole - CEO-engineers or not - has been extremely bullish during that period