If the rap against the new breed of senior management at software vendors today is that they're too often number crunchers—i.e., removed from the actual product being developed—then clearly Dan Ross and Ron Verni don't fit the bill. They started in the software trenches and continue at the helm of software companies today.

Ross, CEO and chairman of supply chain strategy company Optiant ; and Verni, CEO of Best Software , started their careers writing code in Boston in the 1970s. Ross was customizing Burroughs payroll software for taxi companies. Verni coded a rudimentary payroll system for restaurants he owned.

"I wouldn't call myself a programmer," says Ross, "but more a creative sales guy doing whatever it took—including programming—to win a deal and satisfy a customer." He learned that skill at The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Verni's first ventures—the restaurants and a waterbed store—succeeded with sweat equity. "I was grossly undercapitalized, really didn't understand the business models, and I made many mistakes. Fortunately, I was 22 years old and didn't know any better, so I made up for lack of knowledge and experience with a lot of hard work." Verni acquired Basic, Cobol, and Fortran skills "using punch cards, no less," at Clarkson University.

Ross spent 17 years at Digital Equipment Corp., as part of the PC management team before Compaq took over. He was a start-up executive at the publicly held Open Market—which sold for $5.5 billion—and then again as a management member of a videoconferencing company called PictureTel that sold for $500 million. In total he's been involved in six start-ups. Optiant's venture capital backers brought in Ross in 2002 as a way to move the company beyond its academic roots.

Today Ross sees the supply chain software space as somewhat problematic, with erosion in software prices and little expansion. "ROI became a less-credible statement. Lots of promises made were never kept," he says.

Verni's payroll program expanded into a restaurant management package and into ASTEC, developer of the first PC-based accounting application for restaurants. Verni became president of Nebs Software, a senior manager at Micros Software, a VP at Automatic Data Processing, and in 1996, was named president of Peachtree Software.