[golergka]

Why hate for the game? The dude sounds like he's really good at what's he doing, and I think that the company that he leads will profit a lot from his skills. Would be a shame to keep a person like that in engineer position.

[GFischer]

Indeed, I thought he was going to make an excellent presales consultant or sales guy, he was wasted at a "junior programmer" position. He vastly exceeded my expectations.

That kind of skills are pretty good for a CEO, I'll give you that.

But I've seen another CEO at work with the same general style (oodles of charisma, very strong networker, no studies or technical background) and he really messes up technical and financial decisions, he basically has to blindly believe whatever his CFO or CIO say (and the CIO messed up pretty often, the CFO seems pretty solid OTOH).

An actual example: he spent an entire meeting speaking about returns on "bonuses", buying "bonuses", etc.. when he meant "bonds" (he was blindly parroting what the CFO told him, only he messed up).

[gress]

The skills he has are all about receiving a disproportionate amount of credit for work accomplished by a team. How will the company profit from this?

[MrDom]

A programmer in a management or CEO role could make the lives of every programmer underneath him better. After all, he actually knows how to make software. By extension, he knows what's possible and what's not, what's reasonable schedule-wise and what's not. Most managers/CEOs don't.

[gress]

Does he? It sounds like he avoided responsibility for anything that might have carried risk, and only picked easy wins with good visibility in order to make himself look good.

[MrDom]

I know there are people who climb the ladder in the manner in which you state. Is this guy one of them? Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing is certain: at the very least, he has the base minimal understanding of the software life cycle, which is always beneficial in a manager. Even one who shirks responsibility for visibility. ;)

[gress]

Sure, but assuming he is such a person, you are implying that this minimal understanding of the software life cycle is better for engineers at his company than integrity and a desire to see engineers justly rewarded for their efforts. I doubt that.

[MrDom]

you are implying that this minimal understanding of the software life cycle is better for engineers at his company than integrity and a desire to see engineers justly rewarded for their efforts.

I implied no such thing. I'm making a generalization. Your statements so far consist of "Yes, but what if he's an irredeemable sociopath? It's better to have a non-sociopath who doesn't understand software than a sociopath who does." I agree with that, but those aren't the only two options on the table and I refuse to believe the worst in somebody I've never met and only know through an anecdote in a hacker news comment.