Do you think you could do a better job than a CEO of public company [x] from a technical standpoint - in other words, omitting the connections and public-facing charisma that they typically bring as part of the package?

I genuinely do, but kind of paradoxically also suspect I'm wrong. It's simply that it's something so far outside my domain that I just can't really appreciate their skills honed over many years of practice and training, because all I get to externally see are their often ridiculous limitations, failures, and myopia.

I imagine this is, in many ways, how people who have no understanding of e.g. software, let alone software development, see software engineers. I don't think it's uncharitable, it's just human nature. Imagine if we were the ones hiring CEOs. 'That guys a total asshat, and we can get ten guys in India - hard working, smart guys, standouts in 1.4 billion people - for the same price.' Go go go.

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dariusj18 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think there is confusion because coding is easy, software engineering is hard.

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motbus3 2 days ago | parent [-]

Coding was never the hardest problem. And it is hard to say why people are taking so long to realise it

	▲	aaronbaugher a day ago \| parent [-]
		People who don't know how to code know they don't know how. They can look over your shoulder and see that it looks like gibberish, and they also have no interest in understanding it even if they could. On the other hand, designing the software or engineering a solution to the problem seems like something they could do, as far as they know, because it's not something concrete that they can look at and see is beyond their abilities.