21% of CEOs have a degree in Engineering

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I find that surprising. Here is a link that I found that explains why it is prevalent.</p>

<p>It's interesting that there are more engineer CEOs than there are business and finance CEOs.</p>

<p>Here is the link </p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://www.eweek.org/site/news/features/bordroom.shtml%5DEWeek%5B/url"&gt;http://www.eweek.org/site/news/features/bordroom.shtml]EWeek[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

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<p>Interesting? More like makes perfect sense.</p>

<p>What kind of business/finance major has the vision to create the original idea for a product/technology? That’s what engineers do.</p>

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<p>not that surprising when you realize how many different engineering majors there are. you are combining them all together when you refer to “engineering majors”</p>

<p>there are way more students in engineering colleges than any single major taken out from A&S.</p>

4

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Engineering is probably ~5-6% of the undergraduate degrees in the US. That means that on a per capita basis engineering highly outperforms.</p>

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<p>Uh, that article is rather old. Jack Welch, Paul Allaire, and Ken Derr haven’t been CEO’s for awhile now, and Phillips Petroleum isn’t even an independent company anymore, having merged with Conoco to form ConocoPhillips in 2002.</p>

6

<p>‘‘What kind of business/finance major has the vision to create the original idea for a product/technology? That’s what engineers do’’</p>

<p>That’s not entirely true. Marketing and customer relations managers often sense needs/wants of a customer, which leads to new product ideas and development. The engineers create and develop the new product or technology. Actually quite some CMO’s become CEO later on.</p>

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<p>Sensing a need isn’t the same as identifying a solution. I do agree that marketing managers will realize the need sooner than others, in some cases. Regardless, they will generally turn to engineers to solve the problem, which is what the article says.</p>

<p>Marketing is a long and arduous path to CEO. More MBAs in Finance end up in E-suites then Marketing. This is probably because marketing, like HR, is become more of an outsourced business function at many large companies.</p>

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<p>I understand that. If you read carefully, you will see that it doesn’t mention the 21% of engineer CEOs. I got that number from another blog. I just posted that particular article because it gives insights into why engineers become CEOs.</p>

9

<p>It’s not that surprising to see that 21% of CEO’s have engineering degrees. Quite a few engineers go on into finance, and what is a better way to use your talents to create–or better market–a product, and make much more money than what an engineer would make?</p>