[Hizonner]

Not sure Cisco had "two founding engineers", actually. Len would've qualified as an engineer, but Sandy was just... Sandy. And IIRC she thought of herself as the "business side" of the pair. Other pure engineers were of course there early on, but weren't running the company.

On the other hand, it's not obvious Chambers can be counted as a success in running an "engineering company". Chambers ran an acquisition company. It's entirely possible that an acquisition company was a more profitable idea than an an engineering company, but still.

[hayst4ck]

> It's entirely possible that an acquisition company was a more profitable idea than an an engineering company, but still.

I think the primary criticism engineers have against "MBAs" is that they make money, but frequently destroy value.

So "during his time as CEO at Cisco, sales went from $1.9 billion to $49.2 billion." is clear evidence of making money, but is not at all clear evidence of producing value and not any evidence at all of producing more money or value in the US in aggregate.

I don't think very many engineers would agree that "value == money," but it wouldn't surprise me if that was a core axiom of many people defending "MBA" leadership.

This is very very left field, but when the US went off the gold standard, money ceased to have a hard relationship to value because money could be invented and thus money games became more profitable than producing. It's worth contemplating China's strategy. Our money first businesses sending production to China made china the place where value is created. So when covid hit and we needed masks, we had money, but not value and people started to understand the difference leading to many of the efforts we see now like CHIPS. War is an economic shift where value is everything and money is nothing, and since the world is heating up (metaphorically and literally), it's worth centering arguments around value produced rather than money made.

[jacobr1]

I think it is more common that "shortsighted value" or "false value" is looked-down on by engineers. For example, you can increase profitability in the short-term by gutting R&D expense (engineers) but over time maintaining the system and innovating to stay-abreast of the competition will significantly suffer. Or "combining" products that on paper are complementary, but are made of such different tech-stacks and designed for different personas, that combo gets botched and users hate the product even it manages to be sold to exec that won't ever use it themselves.