How to become a CEO

Dr. Severin Schwan

The average CEO takes about 20 years to become a CEO, and is around 47 years old at the time of starting the first CEO position. Be ready for your marathon. Chances of seeing yourself on the cover of Forbes after 5-10 years are really slim.

Large companies are driven by financial numbers. Develop a strong foundation in finance. Try to take active roles in finance, accounting, sales etc.

Be willing to rotate into broader operating roles, even if they are at different divisions and you are not an expert on those topics.

Bijection, injection and surjection

 Here is an easy way to remember which is which:

Injection: 1nject1ion, i.e. 1-to-1

Surjection: as the word "sur" means "on" in French, "surjective" means that the domain A is mapped onto the codomain B, i.e. the whole codomain is covered by the image of the domain.

Bijection: as the prefix "bi" means "two", "bijective" means a function that has both properties: is both injective and surjective

Essential Engineering Softwares

Especially if you studied mechanical engineering, the following are the most essential softwares that you really need to learn:

• MATLAB

• Excel: would be terrific with macros

• Siemens NX: AutoCAD or similar also fine, but this has become the norm in industrial design projects

• COMSOL

• LabView

• C++: I know this is not a software, but yet absolutely necessary