Then they should revise the title to "Software engineers make the best founders."

To your note on Bezos, the whole article makes no points about whether Bezos actually programmed or not, just that he thinks analytically and runs experiments. I mean, great for him! But this article isn't driven by any empirical data. Aside from its disingenuous claims about CEOs, it's a very emotionally written piece (doesn't feel like a software engineer wrote it ;).

I mean, read this:

> After much consideration, it would seem there are unseen forces derived from the nature of value itself that are biasing software engineering CEOs towards greater success, and the raw power of these forces appear to sculpt many of the successful practices of these leaders.

What???!??!? What does that mean???? "Derived from the nature of value itself ... the raw power of these forces ... sculpt many of the successful practices"

This reads like a college freshman's Business 101 term paper.

I'm the original author, value is the organizing force of secular society in my opinion.

Read the potential value portion of article or read further about my understanding of value here: https://iism.org/post/glossary-value-76

"Economic value is also theorized to be the universal organizing force of secular society, and the nature of value is thought to be responsible for the emergence of the three dominant value management systems, each having proceeded out of its own particular value state. Individual contributors are often attracted to a particular type of value, and they are therefore intrinsically motivated by the unique properties of that value type. Often, humans perceive their own value to society in terms of their ability to produce or replicate a thing of value such as a meal, or concert, or a manufactured good. Others might perceive their value in terms of their net worth, and creative individuals might perceive their value in terms of their ability to discover new solutions or their ability to create new works of value."

To your note on Bezos, this section of the article is what really juxtaposed nicely for me with your comment on Bezos not coding:

>So, obviously, those that understand the super infrastructure that is software have a competitive advantage over those that don’t. But, as these leaders move up, they aren’t actually the ones writing the software. So, what differentiates their management practices such that those under them are better able to create and scale value? Other forces must be at play, it’s not as simple as the company’s products and services are software based. In the next sections, we will drill into the value stages for likely causes.

I mean, he clearly isn't writing the code, but he also clearly understands how to run a software org based on him telling wall street that his team is working on a quarter 3 years out.

> it remains to be seen if Tim Cook is another Jobs/Gates or if he is instead a Ballmer

No that doesn't remain to be seen. Tim Cook is clearly one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Compare Apple now to Apple when Jobs died.

If Apple ends up tumbling down in the next, say, 5 years, with Cook still at the helm, what would that say about Cook as the CEO? To me, Apple seems to be in the Microsoft's home-run stretch where they dominated the market with 99% desktop penetration for a while, but no clear "where next".

Apple certainly won't fall because of their sheer size and momentum (just like Microsoft never did), but we look at things differently at that scale and for a while, Microsoft was "stagnant" and "backtracking".

I don't know how people define "most successful CEOs of all time", but I do know that predicting future is a fool's errand (you can go into statistics and risk evaluation, but here we are talking about one person thus not much room for "statistics": I mean, everyone who's hugely successful but then hugely fails has been mostly hugely successful right until they failed).

If they stumble in five years, which seems incredibly unlikely given that there’s a billion people that love their iphones more than almost anything, he would still probably be the most successful CEO in history if you consider shareholder value created.

How does it remain to be seen with Tim Cook. Cook is and has been knocking it out of the park on all fronts from product strategy to share price.

I think it took a while for the Ballmer effect to kick in at Microsoft. Organizations have creating new things baked into their DNA, and it does resist corrosion. So I am curious to see if Cook can avoid squelching that like Ballmer.

Operations is great to have and Cook is really good at it. Focus on ops can destroy the creative process though.

I figure another 8 years and we'll know for sure (Ballmer clocked in at 14). I look forward to being wrong, Cook is a great human being.

Cook is 10 years into his tenure at Apple. Since Ballmer took over in 2000, we can look at the period between 2001 and 2011 for comparison.

During that time, their stock price fell at least 10%. The launch of Windows Vista was bungled (XP outlived Vista). They had a string of failures in the phone market, before finally abandoning it. They had a string of failed acquisitions, including Nokia. Remember the Microsoft Stores?

Azure was the only real lasting success acheived under Ballmer.

The M1 chip and moving Jony Ive on points towards Cook being in a different league to Ballmer.

Also Microsoft lost all relevance in being a mobile phone platform under Ballmer. I can't think of a similar blunder from Cook, maybe losing mindshare from creative professionals, but that's a much smaller market that Apple could be making a comeback in.

At the same time Azure was started under Ballmer, which was important in Microsoft's reinvention and repositioning.

Now if only Cook could reinvent the autocorrect feature.

Haha, in this case it was Sundar Pichai's fault ;)

Fixed the typo.

Not just Ive, but Forstall too. That's gotta have taken guts.

He made some bad exec hires too (Mark Papermaster and John Browett) but he also fired them quickly.

> I think it took a while for the Ballmer effect to kick in at Microsoft.

Tim Cook is about 2/3rds through of Ballmer's tenure. If you were to take a bet today, do you see Tim Cook doing the direction of Ballmer?

Remains to be seen ??

How many more trillion dollar do you need , to give Tim Cook his due credit for operational excellence

Operational excellence he gets all the credit for, just like Ballmer.

Apple is as much a software ompany as it is a hardware company. MS is much more a software company. Cook is a supply chain guy, and with the majority of Apple manufactirung happening at third parties, the operationa excellence is what makes Cook a great CEO, more so because he seems to understand all the other sides of the business as well.

I just bought an M1 Macbook Pro (my first Apple laptop) because I didn’t have anymore reasons to stay with PC. For a long time I was looking at Macbooks like shiny overpriced gadgets, but with its 20 hour lifetime, great screen and performance, amazing touchpad, while Windows 10 being buggier than Windows 7, I stopped having reasons not to switch.

I always found the "overpriced" theme on Apple hardware curious: it always sounds like people are comparing with "wrong" PC hardware.

Whenever I was buying a new laptop, I've only considered MacBooks because they did one thing I cared about a lot (high resolution displays in portable machines), and they were usually cheaper[1] compared to laptops I went for (lately X1 Carbons: worse performance [lower TDP CPUs], better battery life, worse but acceptable screen, keyboards way ahead — in essense, better keyboards and Linux compatibility + nicer design [personal take :] for worse performance and pricing on par or worse than MacBooks). M1 Macs now win even on battery life too, so it's going to be even harder to stay away from them going forward.

Still, keyboards and Linux compatibility will likely keep me in the HP/Thinkpad business lines for longer, but pricing is not the factor when it comes to choosing Apple computers or not for some jobs.

[1] Configuring a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 8th gen brings the Linux + i7-10610U 1.8GHz/16GB RAM/1TB SSD/2560x1440 screen up to $2022 today (down from "retail" price of $3140, which I hope nobody is paying anywhere, ever), and for roughly that money you get a 13" Macbook Pro with i5 ("up to 3.8GHz"), 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and a 2560x1600 13" screen.

Maybe you are right, and Linux desktop improved probably a lot in the last 10 years, I was just very frustrated because I bought a high-end gaming laptop last year with Windows 10, and the system slowed down all the time (for example I had to wait seconds for the start menu after pressing the Windows button).

With the new Macbook Pro everything is just instant (I love the instant wake-up, the instant log-in with the fingerprint sensor...not sure how the Linux desktop compares). I remember how much effort Microsoft put in these things in the old days.