This is a pretty strong claim, and one that could be easily misinterpreted, so let me be as clear as possible about what I’m not saying before we move on:
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I’m not saying that jobs in the tech scene are dying.
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I’m not saying we’re in a tech startup “bubble” (we might be, but I’m not diving down that rabbit hole today)
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I’m not saying computer or software engineers and coders are “underpaid” (down that path lies madness)
What I’m saying is that the nature of tech startups has fundamentally changed.
The change I’m talking about is one of leadership. Founding CEOs in modern startups are more likely to have an MBA or a law degree than a degree in computer science or another technical field.
Hewlett-Packard was founded by two electrical engineers. Microsoft? Two computer programmers. Amazon? Jeff Bezos has a degree from Princeton in computer science and electrical engineering. And, of course, Google was a Stanford research project by two CS grads.
Tech startups over the past 10 years or so are a very different place. Sure, Zuckerberg and Dorsey were coders, but they could be among the last of the nerd-turned-CEO breed, at least when it comes to startups that make it big.
The founding CEO of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, was a philosophy major. Zynga’s founding CEO, Mark Pincus, was a VC. Groupon’s founding CEO, Andrew Mason, had a degree in music.
Looking at even more recent startups, Snapchat’s founding CEO was a product design major, and Slack’s sole founder Stewart Butterfield was a philosophy major.
The familiar story of the tech startup is that it’s founded by somebody who started coding when they were a teenager. Spring’s founder David Tisch started investing when he was a teenager.
Things aren’t what they used to be.
Perhaps more importantly, when we do see tech founders succeeding, it’s usually plainly apparent that true company management is often hiding behind the label “VC.”
It’s not that tech companies should always have tech-savvy leaders, or that one type of skill is morally superior to the other. (As a marketing professional, it would be beyond hypocritical for me to argue that.) I’m also not calling out any of these leaders specifically, because the problem I’m addressing is bigger than any of these companies.
What concerns me is how frequently in this industry we talk about “disruptive technologies” and breaking the status-quo, when the reality is that many emerging startups are just business-as-usual dressed in nerd clothing, and that’s a problem.
Why is that a problem?
Of major concern is the declining status of engineers and programmers in tech companies. It’s not that salaries are going down. It’s that engineers are frequently left out of the decision-making process, an issue that creates more than it’s share of problems, for a variety of reasons:
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From the perspective of a manager with little technical experience, work is indistinguishable from play when it comes to coding and many engineering tasks.
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“software engineering is about writing code like playing chess is about moving pieces”
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Technically inexperienced management is incapable of reliably estimating how long it will take to implement a technically demanding task.
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Engineers and programmers are capable of coming up with ideas that business and design experts simply cannot. (I’m not claiming that these ideas are inherently better.)
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Business experts with no programming experience are incapable of gauging whether software is written in a sustainable way.
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It’s almost impossible for a business expert to tell the difference between a good programmer and a bad one, and the result is an inadequate workforce.
I don’t know whether this is a call for business professionals in tech startups to start treating their engineering counterparts as equals, or a call for engineers to demand to be seen as such.
I do know that if this trend continues, only so much “disruptive technology” is genuinely possible. The end result? Both society and startups will suffer for it.
Written by: Carter Bowles, a strategist at Northcutt.
