I don’t know man. Can Bezos code? Can he operate a forklift? Would he still even recognize Powerpoint if you opened it for him? At certain points things need to be let go of if you want to keep growing. Some managers might keep technical skills sharp, but I’m not sure they’re much better managers for it.
I'm pretty sure the CEO of AWS can't do any engineering work anywhere in AWS. He's an MBA and an Industrial Engineer (whatever that is). He used to be a product manager.
You still need to understand what you are selling, like in a very deep sense. Even if not at the technical levels, you need to understand how the financials of it all works, how to take product and sales roadmap forward. How to hire, fire, how to spend and on what to spend.
All this involves understanding the product in a very deep way, and a good deal of technical details as well. Else your staff will play you like a violin.
Absolute hands off abstract management by words won't cut it anywhere.
On the flip side - I find it very understandable that one might not want to have ever worked at Amazon even in its early days and instead would prefer to work (or have worked) at a much smaller, engineering focused organization.
>>I don’t know man. Can Bezos code? Can he operate a forklift?
Most top level legendary CEOs, could. Zuckerberg, Gates, Jack Welch, Edison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin all worked their way up from the floor to the corner office.
>>At certain points things need to be let go of if you want to keep growing.
This is how you arrive at the situation Boeing is currently. Im sorry but not all businesses have a cookie cut text book way of running things. In fact running any business worth its salt will require you to know the skills at the floor level in a very deep sense.
> Most top level legendary CEOs, could. Zuckerberg, Gates, Jack Welch, Edison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin all worked their way up from the floor to the corner office.
Sure but the tech CEOs success is an anomaly : most if not all the people you cited were able to get to the top because the context was highly exceptional (because personal computing and internet were a total greenfield).
(Also not to mention that, beyond those exceptional circumstances, most of them were already coming from pretty rich families)
Most companies in the world are not ran like this.
