Now it is becoming more common for _accountants_ to be moving up.
I fear for American technology when EEs and ChemEs and physicists are left down in the trenches so that MBAs, marketing types, lawyers, and accountants can run the companies.
Outside of CFO/Controller positions, which have always been landing spots for accountants, I don't think that's the case at all, at least with specific reference to the accountants.
More globally, look at the top ten tech companies in the S&P.
First, MSFT. The top spot is either Gates or Ballmer, depending on your perspective. Gates is a software guy. Ballmer's a career MSFT guy, if you ignore a very short stint at P&G.
Next IBM. Sal Palmisano. Who the heck is he? Probably an MBA type, that's always been the IBM way.
Next, Intel. Craig Barrett, engineer all the way.
Cisco. Chambers is an MBA/marketing guy all the way, just the kind you don't like. Of course, that company wasn't doing much of anything until they kicked the engineer/founders out of the company. Hard to knock that choice of an MBA.
Dell. No MBA/accoutant bean counter running that company, for sure.
Oracle. Same thing, founder's still there and in charge.
Next on the list is the only one I can find where the philosophy has truly shifted from an engineer to a bean counter, Hewlett-Packard wiht Carly Fiorina, and I think you've got a legitimate argument that the bean counters might have killed a fine company.
Final 3 in the tech top 10 are Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and either eBay or Applied Materials, depending on whether you want to call eBay a technology company or not. Personally, I see it as just a retailer that happens to use the 'Net as its distribution network. Qualcomm is run by an engineer (I.M. Jacobs), TI is also run by an engineer (Tom Engibous), eBay is either run by the founder or his handpicked successor (Meg Whitman), and the CEO of AMAT is someone I'm not sure of (James Morgan), though I am sure that the President of AMAT, Dan Maydan, is an engineer.
Which is a pretty long way of saying that I think you are pointing out a trend that doesn't exist. |
