Back to the blog

Majors & careersJuly 24, 202614 min read

What 20 Tech Leaders Studied—and What Parents Can Learn

Twenty careers that show how literature, history, philosophy, design, economics, and related fields can connect to technology and business.

Haddee

From left: Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Stewart Butterfield, Ben Silbermann, Carly Fiorina, Kenneth Chenault, and Andrea Jung. Individual photo credits appear at the end of the article.

Parents often hear a version of the same warning: if a student does not major in computer science or engineering, the door to technology will close. The careers below show that the real picture is more interesting.

These 20 founders and executives studied literature, history, philosophy, political science, economics, communications, design, law, and interdisciplinary fields. Some later added an MBA, a law degree, programming skills, or years of industry experience. Some built products; others built organizations, brands, markets, and teams.

These careers are examples, not a formula. A major alone does not create a career; experience, practical skills, opportunity, and persistence also matter.

20 paths

01

Daniela Amodei

Co-founder and president, Anthropic

Studied

English literature, UC Santa Cruz

Amodei moved through politics, communications, recruiting, and operations before helping start an artificial-intelligence company. Her path is a useful reminder that a technical company also needs people who can build teams, set priorities, communicate clearly, and turn a research vision into an organization.

02

Steve Jobs

Co-founder, Apple

Studied

Liberal arts coursework and calligraphy, Reed College

Jobs left Reed without graduating but continued to sit in on classes that interested him, including calligraphy. He later credited that course with shaping the typography of the first Macintosh. The larger lesson is not that calligraphy automatically creates a great product; it is that a seemingly impractical interest can become valuable when paired with product judgment and technical collaborators.

03

Sheryl Sandberg

Former chief operating officer, Meta

Studied

Economics, Harvard; MBA, Harvard Business School

Economics is a social science rather than a humanities field, but Sandberg belongs in this conversation because her career centered on people, markets, organizations, and business models. Before joining Facebook, she worked in government and at Google. Her work helped demonstrate how operational and commercial skills can determine whether a technology business scales.

04

Susan Wojcicki

Former chief executive officer, YouTube

Studied

History and literature, Harvard; economics and business graduate degrees

Wojcicki began with history and literature before adding economics and business training. She became an early Google employee and eventually led YouTube. Her education did not fit into one tidy category, and that is exactly the point: many careers are built by layering new skills on top of an original academic interest.

05

Alex Karp

Co-founder and chief executive officer, Palantir

Studied

Philosophy, law, and social theory

Karp studied philosophy at Haverford, earned a law degree at Stanford, and completed doctoral work in social theory in Germany. He later co-founded a software company whose products sit inside complicated institutions. His route shows why questions about power, evidence, privacy, and institutions can matter in a deeply technical business.

06

Peter Thiel

Co-founder, PayPal and Palantir

Studied

Philosophy and law, Stanford

Thiel studied philosophy before law and then moved into entrepreneurship and investing. Whatever one thinks of his politics or business choices, the career pattern is relevant: he has spent decades making arguments about markets, institutions, competition, and the future, then using those arguments to guide company-building and investment decisions.

07

Reid Hoffman

Co-founder, LinkedIn

Studied

Symbolic systems, Stanford; philosophy, Oxford

Hoffman’s undergraduate field, symbolic systems, deliberately crosses computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. He then studied philosophy at Oxford. LinkedIn was also a cross-disciplinary idea: software organized around identity, trust, professional relationships, and networks of people.

08

Stewart Butterfield

Co-founder, Flickr and Slack

Studied

Philosophy, University of Victoria and Cambridge

Butterfield studied philosophy at both the undergraduate and graduate level before co-founding products that changed how people share images and communicate at work. He has described philosophy as training in writing and rigorous argument—skills that are useful when a founder must explain a product, recruit a team, and decide what not to build.

09

Ben Silbermann

Co-founder, Pinterest

Studied

Political science, Yale

Silbermann studied political science and worked at Google before starting Pinterest. The product grew around a human behavior—collecting and arranging visual ideas—rather than around a new piece of hardware. Understanding why people save, plan, aspire, and share was central to the product’s appeal.

10

Brian Chesky

Co-founder and chief executive officer, Airbnb

Studied

Industrial design, Rhode Island School of Design

Chesky trained as an industrial designer, not a software engineer. At Airbnb, design extended beyond the screen to the entire experience of hosts and guests: trust, photography, homes, service, and the feeling of arrival. He also built the company with technical and business partners whose strengths differed from his own.

11

Joe Gebbia

Co-founder, Airbnb

Studied

Graphic and industrial design, Rhode Island School of Design

Gebbia met Chesky at RISD and brought a designer’s approach to Airbnb’s earliest problems. One famous early move was visiting hosts, listening closely, and improving their listing photographs. That kind of field observation is basic design research: get close to the user, see what is not working, and improve the experience.

12

Evan Sharp

Co-founder, Pinterest

Studied

History, University of Chicago; architecture studies, Columbia

Sharp studied history and later architecture before helping shape Pinterest’s visual product. Architecture trains people to organize space, hierarchy, movement, and detail; history trains them to interpret evidence and context. Both can influence how a digital environment is structured and understood.

13

Parker Harris

Co-founder, Salesforce; chief technology officer, Slack

Studied

English literature, Middlebury College

Harris studied English literature, then taught himself programming and built a career as a software developer before co-founding Salesforce. This is an important variation on the theme: a humanities degree did not substitute for technical competence. He added a highly practical skill and used both forms of training.

14

Carly Fiorina

Former chief executive officer, Hewlett-Packard

Studied

Medieval history and philosophy, Stanford; later business graduate degrees

Fiorina began with medieval history and philosophy, then added management training and spent years in sales and leadership before running HP. Her story is less about a direct line from history to hardware than about progression: an early liberal-arts education followed by industry experience, commercial responsibility, and graduate study.

15

Samuel J. Palmisano

Former chairman and chief executive officer, IBM

Studied

History, Johns Hopkins University

Palmisano joined IBM after studying history and spent nearly four decades moving through the company before becoming chief executive. That long internal path matters: he learned the business across roles and geographies. The degree opened a career; repeated performance and institutional knowledge built it.

16

Kenneth Chenault

Former chairman and chief executive officer, American Express

Studied

History, Bowdoin College; law, Harvard

Chenault studied history, trained as a lawyer, and then built a career at American Express that culminated in leading the company. His work required judgment under pressure, close attention to customers, persuasive communication, and the ability to guide a large institution through change.

17

Caterina Fake

Co-founder, Flickr

Studied

English, Vassar College

Fake studied English before working in web development and co-founding Flickr. She combined an interest in online communities with hands-on digital skills at a time when the social web was still taking shape. Her path again shows that the strongest combination is often interpretive skill plus the ability to make something.

18

Patrick M. Byrne

Founder and former chief executive officer, Overstock

Studied

Philosophy, Dartmouth, Cambridge, and Stanford

Byrne completed extensive study in philosophy before founding an early online retailer. His later public life has been controversial, so his inclusion here is not an endorsement. It is simply another example of a person moving from humanistic study into internet business and applying argument, systems thinking, and an appetite for unconventional ideas.

19

Howard Schultz

Former chief executive officer, Starbucks

Studied

Communications, Northern Michigan University

Schultz studied communications and built Starbucks around a consumer experience and a story about a 'third place' between home and work. Starbucks is not a technology company, but it belongs in a careers conversation because brand, language, service design, and organizational culture helped turn an ordinary product into a global business.

20

Andrea Jung

Former chief executive officer, Avon; chief executive officer, Grameen America

Studied

English literature, Princeton

Jung studied English literature, entered retail through a management-training program, and later led Avon. She now leads Grameen America, a nonprofit focused on access to capital for women entrepreneurs. Her career has crossed consumer brands, global management, boards, and financial inclusion.

A better conversation at home

Four questions to ask instead of “Is that major practical?”

What does the student want to get unusually good at? Close reading, writing, research, visual design, quantitative analysis, programming, and public speaking are all capabilities—not just course titles.
What complementary skill would widen the path? A history student might add statistics or data visualization. An English student might learn product design or coding. A computer-science student might study ethics, writing, or psychology.
Where will the student produce evidence? Internships, research, portfolios, campus organizations, part-time work, and self-directed projects help an employer see what the student can actually do.
What are the costs and realistic options? Fit matters, but so do tuition, debt, program quality, career support, and the range of opportunities a college makes accessible.

Photo credits and licenses

Portraits are cropped for layout. Links show the publication or original-file trail found through reverse-image matching. A source credit does not by itself grant reuse permission; entries without a stated Creative Commons or public-domain license still require rights clearance before publication.

Daniela Amodei: Annie Noelker / WIRED · Editorial image; usage rights not verified
Steve Jobs: Matthew Yohe · CC BY-SA 3.0; cropped for layout
Sheryl Sandberg: Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for Vanity Fair · Editorial image; usage rights not verified
Susan Wojcicki: TechCrunch · CC BY 2.0
Alex Karp: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images · Editorial image; usage rights not verified
Peter Thiel: Forbes profile image · Editorial image; photographer not listed
Reid Hoffman: Kimberly White / Getty Images · Editorial image; usage rights not verified
Stewart Butterfield: Slack · Official press image; usage terms not verified
Ben Silbermann: Pinterest via AP · Official company image; usage terms not verified
Brian Chesky: Airbnb · Official press image; usage terms not verified
Joe Gebbia: Ryan Lowry · CC BY 4.0
Evan Sharp: Pinterest, Inc. · CC BY-SA 4.0
Parker Harris: Salesforce · Source image
Carly Fiorina: Carly Fiorina official profile image · Official profile image; usage terms not verified
Samuel J. Palmisano: IBM · Corporate portrait from IBM's 2006 annual report
Kenneth Chenault: Fortune archive · Editorial image; photographer not identified
Caterina Fake: J.R. Mankoff / Fast Company · Editorial image; usage rights not verified
Patrick M. Byrne: Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 2.0
Howard Schultz: Steven Ferdman / Getty Images · Editorial image; usage rights not verified
Andrea Jung: Caseyculture · Public domain