Here's a bit of background info on Emil Michael's career and degrees.

http://blog.uber.com/Callinicos_Michael_Baker

"Emil Michael, formerly Chief Operating Officer of Klout, and prior to that was SVP of Field Operations at TellMe Networks, is joining Uber as our SVP of Business. Emil is known as one of the top deal guys in the Valley, a strategic deal maker who also brings experience scaling sales organizations. I am counting on Emil to be the leader of our business efforts and the face of Uber to our business partners and users globally. Emil starts with Uber today."

From his bio on business week

Mr. Emil Michael served as Senior Vice President Field Operations at Tellme Networks, Inc. He joined Tellme in June 1999 and he held several leadership roles as the director of business and corporate development, vice president of client development and acting general counsel. Mr. Michael led the client development, account management and solution delivery teams at Tellme. He joined Tellme from Goldman Sachs, Inc., where he served as an associate in the communications, media and entertainment investment banking group. At Goldman Sachs, Mr. Michael worked on several equity and bank debt financings. He also participated in merger and hostile takeover advisory projects for several of Goldman Sachs' Fortune 100 clients. He began his career as a strategy consultant at Gemini Consulting's converging markets laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Michael received his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard and his law degree from Stanford University.

From the wikipedia page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Michael

An immigrant from Egypt,[5] Michael received his B.A. in Government cum laude from Harvard University, where he wrote for the Harvard Crimson[6] and served as president of the Harvard Republican Club. While he was president, the club changed its name to the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club in an effort to reach out to potential members who perceived the club as sexist.[7] He received his J.D. degree with honors from Stanford Law School.[5]

So my understanding is that he isn't really a technologist, he is a Harvard government major followed by Stanford Law degree, he has a stint at Goldman Sachs, and he is a great deal maker.

Of course, I can't prove a negative - does anyone know if he did substantial technical work at some point?

Overall, I do think michaelochurch is accurate in pointing out that Emil Michael doesn't appear to be a lifelong technologist. He may represent a new trend in tech management - dealmakers who aren't really versed in technology and haven't really been directly involved in building technology products themselves.

Is this relevant? It reminds me of a statement from Elliot Spitzer in the movie "Inside Job" about corruption in the banking industry and the banking crisis.

Spitzer: "Well, high tech is a fundamentally creative business, where the valuegeneration and the income derives from actually creating something new and different"

I'm not sure I agree anymore (the collusion not to poach, for example shows a pretty bad pattern of behavior), but it is something to think about. If tech becomes dominated by finance, law, deal "guys" (this is the term used by uber to describe him), we may very well lose that culture that kept some of this kind of thing at bay because we were, at our core, a group of builders, people who are deeply involved in making things. This transformation may already be well underway.