What you’re called doesn’t really matter. Like in college, you need both the depth and the breadth to do well. You need the depth in your field to do your job well. And you need the breadth to understand how the piece you work on fit into the larger picture, and not just technically.
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There are lots of tech jobs that don’t involve software engineering at a company like Google. My neighbor works at Google and manages a consumer tech support team (for all intents and purposes a call center). He couldn’t write a line of code for the product (or for anything else) and doesn’t need to. But he needs to know how it works. Try telling him he’s not a tech worker.
I write systems requirement documents on occasion. But it’s 25 years since I wrote any code more sophisticated than an Excel spreadsheet and I wouldn’t call myself an engineer (software or otherwise). There are many such tech jobs. Even in marketing there are plenty of pre-sales roles which require technical knowledge without ever writing the code itself. There’s no bright line here.
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If I knew him and it came up in a conversation I would 
If you manage a call center team you are basically in “customer Support”. That role could be in a tech company like Google or a non-tech company like Petsmart. Same holds for sales, pre-sales ect. You can have that role in a tech company or a non-tech company, but in the end you are are a customer support person, a sales person, …
I’ll let you fight it out with Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg, since by your definition they aren’t tech workers either.
But in any case here’s a more comprehensive study on the subject, which includes occupations such as “user support technician”:
Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg are founders of tech companies 
My weekly trash pickup guy is a sanitation engineer. Go figure ???
And Zuckerberg doesn’t have a college degree.
I think so much just depends on the individual - and their work ethic and expectations.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen a number of graduates and expect some pretty high salaries when they have not proven themselves at all in the workplace yet. Or expect their dream job at age 22.
Supply and demand trumps expectations. Expertise in sought after fields is well rewarded.
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Plenty of tech jobs don’t require programming. You can be in operations and support servers, support deployments, you could be a network engineer, deal with firewalls, etc. You can be on a support team that works on tickets. These are all tech jobs.
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I told my daughter that she can study anything she wants…but she has to support herself with it.
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Unless she supports herself with another job, that is not related to her major.
It really doesn’t matter what their major is - after they graduate they are grownups, and they should be going off a supporting themselves, no matter what major they choose.
I mean, if your daughters wants to do a history major, while also taking some professional coding courses, and then supports herself by working in tech, I do not think that you would mind.
Well, that- and some help: Zuckerberg started out w/ no college debt + $100k in seed money from the Bank of Mom & Dad….
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I wish that I could personally thank Mary Maxwell Gates (now deceased) for the confidence that she had in her son to push IBM to make what was probably the best decision that company ever made. I’d also like to thank Bill Gates for making Microsoft a tech power house directly employing 108,000 in the US alone and thousands more indirectly.
I would also like to thank Elon Musk for choosing to become a US citizen in 2002 (over Canada or South Africa) and founding some of the most technologically advanced companies in the world. Love him or hate him, I think Musk epitomizes a brash entrepreneurial spirit that is needed in the United States right now. SpaceX has accomplished what NASA was never able to do at a fraction of the cost, Tesla is leading the way in EVs and autonomous driving, Neuralink, OpenAI, the list (hopefully) continues to grow.
My thanks also go out to the early investors, parents, and rich friends of Jeff Bezos that helped launch Amazon. I though of them daily during the early months of the COVID pandemic as the Amazon boxes arrived at our home keeping my family, and countless others, both supplied and safe.
And finally, my hat’s off to Warren Buffet a true American businessman and philanthropist. His down to earth approach to investing as helped me reach my financial goals and I applaud him for pledging to give away 99% of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Dang, there’s that Gates guy again!).
I’m sure that many or all of these individuals do not reach the high bar of purity required by some, but for me I’m glad they are successful, and I’m glad that they achieved their success in the US.
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? @Rivet2000, I am not in any way critical of any of these people, or the successes that they have had. They took what they had and they worked hard to build on it. None of them took their good fortune for granted, or sat around eat bon bons all day.
is unnecessary snark, and if you are including me in that “some”, also inaccurate. My point, simple and true, was that “work ethic and expectations” will take you far- but having a head start helps also. I don’t think it helps to hold people up as ‘self-made’ when they have had such a powerful head start.
In the ‘self-made’ category, I am more impressed by Leonardo Del Vecchio, a metal worker and tool and die maker who started making glasses and founded Luxottica. Or Dolly Parton, whose career as a country singer has long masked the level of her philanthropy and business - whatever you think of Dollywood, it is a huge employer in a part of the country that doesn’t get a lot of investment. Or Phil Knight (Nike), Jan Koum (WhatsApp), Bernard Marcus (Home Depot) Ralph Lauren (RL) and a host of others, who didn’t get a head start.
tl;dr- nothing against any of those 5 guys above- just pointing out there’s “self-made” and “self-made with a head start”.
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They are all quite impressive. Some have more impact than others but all good examples.
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All four are listed by Forbes with a “self made score” of 8, which they define as “Self-made who came from a middle-class or upper-middle-class background”.
Regarding Bill Gates’ mother, the board that she and IBM’s then-CEO were both on was that of United Way. Bill Gates himself apparently told IBM to first talk to Digital Research for CP/M, but that failed to get an agreement, resulting in IBM coming back to Microsoft.
Regarding Warren Buffett’s father, he was a representative for four terms, but in only one of those terms, he was a part of the majority party in the House of Representatives (but the President was of the other party during all of those four terms). It does not look like he had any high office in the House of Representatives (Minority Leader, etc.), so probably not especially powerful.
Regarding Elon Musk’s father’s emerald mine, it was apparently in Zambia, and the story about it is a bit odd (like some other things about Elon Musk).
Regarding Jeff Bezos’ initial Amazon investors, apparently he asked about 60 people for $50,000 investments each, and got 20 or 22 of them to buy in (despite saying that there was a 70% chance that they would never see the money again). These included his mother and stepfather, who invested $245,573.
So, while they were “self made” from an advantaged (though not billionaire inheritance or the like) starting point, the social media meme is somewhat misleading (as usual).
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There are lots of well off kids in society. The amount who have what it takes to make it insanely huge like these five is infinitesimal. Many become managers, etc and some even CEOs. But taking over an established company or college or football team or any other organization, while a fantastic accomplishment, is not even in the same ballpark as creating something from nothing.
We all strive to put our kids in a strong position to succeed. Their success is creating, not just growing what was handed to them, is beyond enviable.
Again, not diminishing. It takes nothing away from their accomplishments to point out the ones that did the same- without the head start. Not sure why this bothers anybody.
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Yes, I see and get it - you still appreciate them!!!
Thanks
Though people who buy eyeglasses may not be impressed with the company’s attempts to monopolize the frame and lens market.
Forbes self-made scores from the Forbes 400 listing:
- Dolly Parton: not in the Forbes 400
- Phil Knight & family: 8, “Self-made who came from a middle-class or upper-middle-class background”
- Jan Koum: 10, “Self-made who not only grew up poor but also overcame significant obstacles”
- Bernard Marcus: 10, “Self-made who not only grew up poor but also overcame significant obstacles”
- Ralph Lauren: 9, “Self-made who came from a largely working-class background; rose from little to nothing”
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