Comment by tidepod12
5 years ago
Tim Cook has a bachelor engineering degree but he hasn't been involved in engineering work since the 90s. He's been the head of operations, making business decisions like closing down factories and outsourcing production, since his days at IBM. He is a supply chain wonk, which is why he got an MBA (supply chain management is a core part of business school teachings). This is also easily available information. Cook has been "focused on business and profits" for decades, and yet you act like he is an example of a great "engineer" in charge.
Believe it or not, managing the supply chain is a specialty of industrial engineering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering#Sub-dis...
>Although it has the same goals as supply chain engineering, supply chain management is focused on a more traditional management and business based approach
gasp, there's that evil "business" word again
I've always been impressed with production engineers, cause they always find a way to explain to us (software/electric/electronic engineers) the issues with the marketing/commercial/supply chain side and explain to the executives/MBAs that, no, adding 10 people to a 5 people team won't make the team go 3 time faster. In big consortiums projects they are pretty much a glue imho.
Having a production engineer as an exec is probably the best way to run a successful team if you project involve multiple field of knowledge (as Apple probably does).
Tim Cooks understand tradeoffs, and this understanding should be expected of any top exec. Is it often the case?
Once upon I time I worked in a process engineering gig. Literally every problem started by trying to explain no, just adding more people to a bad process won’t magically fix things. And yet, that was always the knee-jerk reaction to those owning the process. I think it’s because a bad process has the people constantly reactively fire-fighting they naturally feel short-handed