Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to re: Speaking of engineers...

That's it in nut shell
Robert — (archived)

"...why isn't he running his own company?"

Engineers generally make lousy businesspeople, and their downfall is usually the belief that a business and the people in it can be managed according to sound engineering principles. You couldn't have come up with a better illustration of my point if I'd fed you the lines to write.

Very few technology companies made it tp the bigtime under the continued leadership of the original founding engineers. In the case of the few who did, the founders left engineering behind and became bussinessmen, usually after a string of painful lessons about how little business resembles engineering. Nowadays no business plan written by engineers is complete without a strategy to bring in professionals so that the engineers can step aside as early as possible. The VCs look for it as a sign that the entrepreneur-engineer has a grip on reality; engineeers who've been around the Valley for a while know that the VCs eat engineers for breakfast and that if you don't want to lose the company you founded entirely, you need business professionals on your side to balance theirs. There are many terms for an engineer who tries to run his own business, and "fresh meat" is among the politest.

Why aren't you running your own company, Tom? Hmmmm?

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