"CEO Machines"

Fortune magazine lists  companies which are training grounds for CEOs  - GE, P&G and others.

They should have given Larry Ellison and Oracle credit. While most Oracle alum have gone to private tech companies, it is an impressive list

Tom Siebel, Siebel (acquired by Oracle)
Gary Bloom, Veritas (merged with Symantec)
Craig Conway, PeopleSoft (acquired by Oracle)
Marc Benioff, salesforce.com
Harry You, Bearingpoint
Terry Garnett, several companies and now at Ingres
George Kadifa, Corio (acquired by IBM)
Robert Shaw, ArcSight
Polly Sumner, Alphablox (acquired by IBM)
Nimish Mehta, Stratify (now works for SAP)
Doug Merritt, Icarian (now works for SAP)

and many, many more...

I may not agree with Oracle on many things but they have been an impressive incubator for many in tech...

Author's Note: Fortune may have missed Oracle, but Forbes did not in this March 2005 article. They identified another prominent Oracle alum, Umang Gupta