When it Comes To Landing A Top Job At Twitter, That Degree in French ...

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

In addition to all the details revealed in Twitter's filing for an initial public offering last week, we now know at least two other things about CEO Dick Costolo. First, he's not above using comedian Carrot Top to denigrate his critics. And second, Twitter's lack of women in its leadership ranks stems from Costolo's unwillingness to add token women to his team after failing to find qualified candidates.

'The whole thing has to be about more than checking a box & saying 'we did it!' Costolo tweeted on Oct. 5 tweet after the New York Times and other company watchers criticized him for the lack of diversity on Twitter's board and management team - and after he called one of his critics, respected author and researcher Vivek Wadhwa, the 'Carrot Top of academic sources.'

'You give people an easy out by just checking a box,' Costolo tweeted. 'The issues are much bigger than checking any 1 box.'

Twitter has reportedly been looking for women candidates for its board for more than a year, with AllThingsD reporting in Nov. 2012 that a 'number of female candidates have already been interviewed, but none have been selected.'

Which begs the question: What qualifications do you need to be considered for Twitter's board and its top management team?

There are probably lots of must haves, but it turns out that one thing you don't really need is an engineering or computer science degree. Of the dozen executive officers and board members called out in Twitter's Oct. 3 S-1 filing, only two - Costolo and Christopher Fry, senior vice president of engineering - have technical degrees. The rest of Twitter's leaders and advisors have undergraduate degrees in a myriad of subjects, from French literature to East Asian Studies to Philosophy, while co-founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, who serve on Twitter's board, are college dropouts. There's also five M.B.A. degrees in the mix, and the law degree obtained by the general counsel, the one woman on Twitter's leadership team.

Here's the breakout:

* Dick Costolo, CEO: B.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

* Ali Rowghani, COO: B.A. in international relations from Stanford University, M.B.A. from Stanford University

* Mike Gupta, CFO: B.S. in accounting and economics from New York University, M.B.A. from the University of Chicago

* Adam Bain, president of global revenue: B.A. in English journalism from Miami University

* Christopher Fry, SVP of engineering: B.A. in cognitive science from Vassar College, Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego

* Vijaya Gadde, general counsel: B.S. in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University, J.D. from New York University School of Law

* Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and director: dropout, New York University