If you're familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", then you're aware of the Warren Harding Effect, which suggests most powerful people are tall, which gives them an advantage in business.
Gladwell found that most male CEOs were a shade under six feet.
That means most male bosses about three inches on other men; the average height of men in the US is 5'9".
Though women executives aren't as well studied, American women are 5'4" on average.
"Most of us, in ways that we are not entirely aware of, automatically associate leadership ability with imposing physical stature," Gladwell says. "We have a sense, in our minds, of what a leader is supposed to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations."
Now, in the tech world, CEOs come in all shapes and sizes. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is 5' 9".
But there are a handful of powerful people in tech who meet or surpass Gladwell's perfect CEO height. They're the kind of people that command your presence the moment they walk in the room, aided by the fact that they tower over everyone else.
Arianna Huffington, for example, is 5' 10". That's a good half-foot taller than the average. A few tech CEOs are 6' 3" or taller, which is extremely rare. Only about 2% of the U.S. population is that tall.
After a few personal encounters with surprisingly tall executives, we were curious how Gladwell's tall theory held up in tech. So we took their measure—on Google, Twitter, and Quora.
Marissa Mayer is model height at 5' 8"
Source: Google
Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is 5' 8" too
Source: Google
Arianna Huffington is 5' 10"
Source: Huffington Post
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