reddit has always been an unconventional company, we're betting an engineer (with strong understanding of community) will do just fine.

Actually, this is fairly common, about the third of CEOs have a degree in engineering.

I'd be really interested in where that data comes from. Mind sharing?

Here you go: http://blog.identified.com/2012/01/new-identified-research-r...

Those charts make it look like over 50% of CEOs have engineering degrees. They're missing liberal arts and science degrees. Still, cool to see how a degree in engineering hardly limits you to the trenches.

I wish they would try politics next.

http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top... The top 8 out of 9 Chinese officials are scientists. Granted the culture and political structure are a bit different in the West vs China.

Engineers and scientists are particularly well-suited to hold office in a communist country. The very idea of managed economies was based on the idea of informed technocrats being able to make decisions to the benefit of all. In fact, in the case of the Soviet Union, it worked brilliantly... until it didn't.

The current Chancellor of Germany is a good example. I think the US is a long way from that happening though (at that level).

As long as they don't become more like conventional CEO's and forget they were once writing code having lot of fun building applications and solving issues on day to day basis. Now that they are CEO's asking questions which makes you think..were they engineers before? I hope he doesn't turn to conventional.