I think the article would have been better served if he just came out and said what he wanted to say, instead of skirting around it.
He really wanted to say, "Respect me, dammit. You have no idea how hard my job is. I just sold my business for $200 Million but some of you still don't take me seriously because I don't know how to program."
Tech cofounders have, rightfully, learned to eschew sketchy/crappy/douchey business co-founders. Sometimes the generality of "business guy" takes the fall with that. The truth is that it's a lot easier to fake having the potential to be a CEO than it is to fake having the potential to be a CTO. If you've ever noticed how ready marketers/business guys are to throw out their credentials, that's because until you have at least a somewhat successful startup under your belt, you can't be taken seriously. You have no tangible skill. You're a liability.
The author wants technical co-founders to know what it's like to be him for a minute.
Except he didn't. In douchey-business-guy fashion he tries to put an entire community of transdisciplinary people in their place by telling them to be happy with handling the technical side of things, while people like him interface with users, design the product, run the numbers, market and sell it.
I'm a programmer/interaction designer. In design school we were told by professors that "programmers think in terms of X, but designers think in terms of Y. You should never code if your a designer, and never let a programmer design" While they are correct that exercising one muscle will benefit at the exclusion of others, they go to far with the assertion that there exists some cognitive boundary between design and development. The same goes for singular-thinking business guys, like the author, who attempt to dress down engineers who want to try their hand at something new.
I've never met a engineer tell an aspiring business guy "just be a business guy, don't try to code". In fact, most engineers I know will heap praise at business people who bootstrap their idea, even if the first attempt is a bit wonky. This just proves how badly the person wants their vision to be realized.
New years resolution for 2013: stop trying to clip other's wings.
"In douchey-business-guy fashion he tries to put an entire community of transdisciplinary people in their place"
I think his point is also that this type of thing is not just accepted, but encouraged within engineering circles when talking about business people.
But yes, it wasn't delivered very well and the confrontational nature of it will mean that a lot of people who would do well to heed its advice will immediately turn defensive and get nothing from it.
"The truth is that it's a lot easier to fake having the potential to be a CEO than it is to fake having the potential to be a CTO."
That's easy to say when you're a developer and understand what makes a good CTO. There are probably a lot of business guys who don't know how to evaluate tech guys any more than tech guys know how to evaluate business guys. It's probably not that hard to bullshit a business guy if you can talk convincingly about scalability, node.js, Clojure, Big Data, "cloud", etc. A lot of solo business guys looking for technical co-founders will end up with sub-optimal technical co-founders because they don't know how to filter them out.
However, you're also right about the difficulties of identifying potential CEOs. Part of the problem is that, due to the hierarchical nature of firms, there's simply a massive shortage of people with CEO experience - most firms employ just one CEO at a time. This means that if you're looking for a CEO, you're probably going to have to take a chance on someone who hasn't done it before, and there's a much bigger experience gap between "business guy with MBA" and "good CEO" than there is between "senior developer" and "technical co-founder". This shortage is (partly) why experienced CEOs get paid so much, and why the jump in compensation from "business guy with MBA" to "CEO" is much bigger than the jump from "senior developer" to "CTO".
This is also a problem for aspiring CEOs, because they can't prove themselves until they get a chance, and chances at CEO level are very rare. The good potential CEOs can't easily differentiate themselves from the bad ones, and this also creates a perverse situation in which simply faking CEO potential doesn't have many disadvantages compared to actually being good. Once you've been hired anywhere as a CEO, so long as you don't calamitously screw up, you're on the right side of the CEO scarcity problem.
He really wanted to say, "Respect me, dammit. You have no idea how hard my job is. I just sold my business for $200 Million but some of you still don't take me seriously because I don't know how to program."
Tech cofounders have, rightfully, learned to eschew sketchy/crappy/douchey business co-founders. Sometimes the generality of "business guy" takes the fall with that. The truth is that it's a lot easier to fake having the potential to be a CEO than it is to fake having the potential to be a CTO. If you've ever noticed how ready marketers/business guys are to throw out their credentials, that's because until you have at least a somewhat successful startup under your belt, you can't be taken seriously. You have no tangible skill. You're a liability.
The author wants technical co-founders to know what it's like to be him for a minute.