https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
I think the median age in the top 10, for example, is around 40.
Stephen Cass: You’re a much more experienced programmer now versus 25 years ago. What’s one thing you know now that you wish your younger self knew?
Linus Torvalds: Actually, I credit the fact that I didn’t know what the hell I was setting myself up for for a lot of the success of Linux. If I had known what I know today when I started, I would never have had the chutzpah to start writing my own operating system: You need a certain amount of naïveté to think that you can do it. I really think that was needed for the project to get started and to succeed. The lack of understanding about the eventual scope of the project helped, but so did getting into it without a lot of preconceived notions of where it should go.
Or maybe, it is true of people who choose to comment.
People who believe they don't know much about a subject may choose to remain silent on the matter.
I'm writing a hotel property management system right now for a hotel chain. In its first year, it will move more money than most startups will make in their lifetimes. Somehow, that isn't "cool", though.
Hence be the boring bishops and exciting pawns paradox.
Also, I'm not sure I really buy the argument that because you can automate some "day to day business tasks" means you know better about how a business should be run. Automating a process that already exists is not the same as deciding which processes need to exist and which don't. Certainly, there are people who can both but I'd be lying if I said any significant number of engineers I know could really do both.
However, there's the magical "sales" and "public relations" side which those same awful (operationally) managers usually excel at.
When those managers have a strong CIO or operations guy by their side they're a killing team, but I've seen cases where they get sweet-talked by an atrocious ignorant CIO (and they can't see it because they're not knowledgeable themselves).
I've also seen strong, well rounded CEOs... and many were engineers transitioned to management roles (with MBAs, etc).
See also: Dunning-Kruger effect.
Code is pure, while business tends to get nasty and diabolical at times. Also, "code" self-proves its value, "business" simply doesn't.
Let's not forget the people who started this whole personal-computer revolution were hippies, geeks, techies, and nerds who cared about the "code" and how this could make "peoples' lives" better.