4) The CEO and any other execs involved in the hiring process don't know enough to hire for the position properly. Anecdotally, every single case I've seen of a non-technical Engineering / IT director (multiple, first and second hand), this has been the case.
Indeed. There are a bunch of bad reasons but I thought I'd try and point out some reasons why it's not necessarily a sign of incompetence.
Some of this comes down to organisation and department size too. You get directors of IT where a department of five or six people. In that instance they should absolutely have some recent technical exposure. Once you get up to a department of 20 or so though technical competence isn't top of the list of things a candidate has to have.
Agreed, I have worked for technical and non-technical bosses. On one disastrous occasion we the department director was a promoted IT teacher whose main qualification was a certificate of competence from the British Computer Society. She stayed for a couple of years, I lasted a year under her confused leadership before I quit over the directors incompetence. The first time I have quit for more than just job progression.
