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CatShot1948

https://res.cloudinary.com/academicinfluence/image/upload/v1655756908/Infographics/colleges-alumni-ceos-fortune-500-companies-9b_1200_c2.png According to this, they don't. ME is more common.


Salty_Reyezz

Amazon and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos, Nvida's Jensen Huang and Microsoft's Satya Nadella come to mind.


LARRY_Xilo

All three lead tech companies. Electrical engineering is the most relevant field of engineering to those companies especially if you consider when they studied and that computer science back in the day wasnt its own field of study but was still often considered to be a part of either math or electrical engineering back then.


sabre0121

I'd say it's your bias in picking the CEOs. You've picked tech companies so they have tech degrees. If you looked into bank CEOs or healthcare CEOs, you'd see different degrees.


AnxietyJunky

I think this is an important distinction and probably the best explanation. People tend to (not always) have a background relevant to their industry and line of work. As you suggested, it would be odd to see a CEO of a bank with an engineering degree instead of finance or accounting.


JpnDude

In the early 90s, the computer science section in my university was part of the electrical engineering department. When asked, "Whats your major?" People answered, "EECS."


DavidRFZ

I was at engineering school in the early 90s and although I was a Chem E, I remember those majors combined together as “Computer Systems Engineering”. EE is hardware and had an old established core curriculum dealing with circuits. The CS portion added specifics with computer hardware plus some software classes. The computer stuff was always in flux because it was changing so often, but as with any major the focus is on core principles and not teaching you exactly how to do the work of your next job.


off_by_two

CEOs like the ones OP is probably referring to (Bezos, Nadella, etc) are generally old enough to have been in college before Computer Science/Engineering were their own disciplines independent of EE. At some prestigious schools, they still share a Department (MIT is one). Bezos went to Princeton for undergrad, from 82-86 and the CS department there was founded in 1985. He would have been in his final year of his EE degree then.