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Cher Wang, the most powerful female tech executive you've never heard of (nytimes.com)
21 points by echair on Oct 27, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 17 comments



> you've never heard of

We've heard about her alright. Just as much as we've heard about the CEOs of Asus, Hynix, Toyota, Lenovo, and Haier. Cultural, perhaps?


Goddamn it, why do we still feel the need to emphasize "the most powerful FEMALE" executive bit? Isn't it enough to recognize that she's damn powerful without taking her out of the general pool of executives and thereby not comparing her to male executives?


Remember girls, you too can be empowered to be the daughter of one of the richest men in the world. Grrlpower!


It is one thing to have access to large resources, but quite another to be able to use large resources effectively. Wang has proven herself capable in her own right. Headstart or not, she deserves much respect and inspires many.

Her (late) father has quite an amazing story himself. If you count Cher as continuing his legacy, it is the result of two generations of rags-to-riches hard work.


I'm sorry, i've never been inspired by anyone that turned some millions into billions. Her story is no different than that of Donald Trump.

edit: Donald Trump, sans the outsize hyperbolic attitude.


Fair point, but perhaps approach it from a different perspective. Her father did not even complete grade school, but built a highly respected empire in a field most people would not think much about. He lives frugally and champions diligence. His children (and children-in-law) also live by admirable principles.

As a legacy, it is grounded in good principles. You take and you give back. The wealth follows, but is secondary. It is inspiring to see leaders in this class, no matter if they accumulate millions or billions.

The hyperbolic attitude, I think, makes a world of difference, and makes a terrible comparison.


Ok point taken. But Fred Trump was similar to her father, i don't think he went to college.

Perhaps i am inspired by people that are successful, but much more by people like Mark Cuban, who came from nothing. Much harder and merits much, much more respect.


I wish the NY times wouldn't make me login so I wouldn't have to use BugMeNot every single time. At least there's an ff plugin.


Accessing NY times articles from a Google search will let you view the article without logging in.


If NYT makes you login, clear your cookies. Easy peasy.


That's what I always do. I wonder if you could make a browser plugin that just did this automatically. Can plugins clear cookies?


Have you tried blocking cookies from NY Times completely in the Prefs -> Privacy -> "Exceptions" area. Also, there is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1243 - which does the same thing as adding to Exceptions, but with a different way of adding sites to the rules afaik.

Also, there's the whole "Private Browsing..." mode in Safari, but I couldn't find something similar last time I hunted for something along those lines in Firefox built in.


I think I tried it and the NYT refused to show me pages.


Completely forgot about that - thank you!


"HTC had strong engineers developing notebooks, said Mr. Chen. But it was a volatile business with lots of competitors. She saw that clearly and pushed for the other instead."

I'm curious as to how she decided cell phones over notebooks. Cell phones seem to be uber-competitive, too.


Perhaps not in 1987?


The article says 1997.




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