CEO, the Least Popular Job in Silicon Valley

Potential CEOs are opting for quicker dollars at startups and investment firms

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By Peter Burrows

September 29, 2011 at 11:51 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

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This article is part of the October 3, 2011 issue of businessweek.

Dave DeWalt is known within Silicon Valley for his technical chops, his charisma, and his business accomplishments, which include reinvigorating security software maker McAfee and selling it to Intel in 2010 for $7.7 billion. At 47, he now has bigger ambitions. “Running a big-cap company is considered the crowning achievement in many people’s careers, and I feel that way as well,” says DeWalt.

Such talk makes DeWalt an anomaly. In tech circles, the C-suite at a publicly traded company is no longer the be-all and end-all. Just look at the troubles Yahoo! and Hewlett-Packard have recently had finding new leaders. HP canned former SAP Chief Executive Officer Léo Apotheker after just 11 months—then faced a barrage of criticism for replacing him with HP director and former EBay CEO Meg Whitman without bothering to look beyond its own boardroom.