The Cost of a CEO Who Cannot See the Software
Why is a non-technical CEO expensive for a software company?
The structural health of the software is invisible to him. Status reports show what got done, not whether the system is getting easier or harder to change. He makes decisions on a picture of the technology that is missing the parts that matter most. The company pays the difference between what was committed and what was actually possible, in a currency the CEO cannot see.
What is the knowledge asymmetry between engineering and business skill?
Learning to think like an engineer takes years of managing complex multi-variable systems. Learning to think like a business leader is comparatively faster. When a non-technical founder offers half the equity to buy a technical co-founder, he is buying something expensive with something cheap. From that point on, every technology decision flows through a CEO who does not have the background to evaluate it.
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