Ask HN: CTO vs. VP of Engineering

Note: I'm posting this under a different account than I normally use on HN because I want to remain anonymous.

For the last 2+ years I've been the CTO for a technically successful startup. I have successfully navigated the company around some very real disasters and have built a highly dedicated tech team that has excelled at realizing the technical vision of the product; despite whatever curve balls have been thrown at us - externally or internally. In those two+ years, I've worn every hat one could wear (from IA to project management to product development to systems admin to front end development to back end development) and have worn those hats as well as I could. We've staffed up to the point that I no longer am wearing as many hats, which I am grateful for, but still have a few key roles to fill, mostly in the project management category.

Several months ago, we hired a new CEO, whom I partially respect, but don't necessarily like. As is typical, his first criticisms were aimed squarely at the tech team because the tech team is always the first to blame - despite the fact we've always done what we said we would when we said we would. Obviously, as the only part of the company that produces tangibles, it's fairly easy to square operational issues on us. I've fought those criticisms as well as I could, but have been unable to make him see the real problem is the front office's lack of vision and an inability to communicate clearly whatever vision they might have. I've done the best I can given the sheer number of things I am required to do during the day, but, as anyone can correctly surmise, isn't the best I could do if I had a more singular focus. It's really hard to context switch from installing nagios on our production servers to doing IA to doing project management; all within the span of a few hours, day after day. It wears one down.

So he recommends we hire a VP of Engineering, which I agree to. It makes sense. Let that person run the process and let me focus on the bigger picture, architecture, product, etc. But then I read the job description and notice the line where it says this role reports directly to the CEO. Which means, since the entire tech staff is reporting to the VP of E, that I lose my staff. When I bring this up with the CEO, he tells me that I should see this VPE as a peer. Say what? It's bad enough that I have to explain to employees that have been with the company for 2+ years they are going to have a new boss, but now that boss doesn't even report to me?

Am I being paranoid that I'm being marginalized for an ill-perceived picture of the tech team? Is the CEO playing politics? I'm at a complete loss.

Advice?

In my company, the CTO and CEO are the co-founders. The CTO has a PHd and our revolutionary product is pretty much his brain child implemented by the tech staff under them. We also have a VP of Engineering that they hired. (a Director of Eng in their previous venture). However, the VP of Eng reports to the CEO. The CTO has his own set of staff and they basically brainstorm on new ideas. We engineers respect all of them, but the CTO is definitely placed at a higher pedestal because the bread & butter produect being his idea. But, the CTO does not deal with most of the engineering staff except a few members who are working under him for some latest ideas or our product in the R&D phase, not released to the market yet. As an analogy, the CTO is more like a College professor with a bunch of RA's under him :)

I am not sure what your background in your company is. Just wanted to share what i saw in my company.

The CEO has decided that you have technical ability but not management ability. He doesn't want to lose your nagios-installation skills but he thinks that an imaginary person whom he has not yet met or hired will be better than you at leading the tech team. He's happy to let you keep the fancy CTO title and perks so you don't lose face, or because he doesn't want a confrontation.

I would guess based on your comments and the fact that you're asking this question that politics are not your strong suit. "Politics", b.t.w., is just the natural state of people working together... it can be dysfunctional or functional, but as soon as you have 3 people, you have some kind of politics.

Since politics are a major component of management, you may actually be happier not doing management.

In situations like this the CEO is probably overestimating his ability to find a Magical VP Technology that will magically solve all his problems (unless he has someone in mind, a buddy from a previous company, for example). Likely he will spend 6-9 months trying to find someone, finally hire someone imperfect in despair, and spend the next year or two discovering that person is incompetent, too. But now I'm really just projecting.

If you don't like the CEO it may be time to move on. Life is to short to work with people you don't enjoy spending time with.

I worked in a company where the VP of Engineering didn't report to the CTO. It made some sense because the CTO mostly directed the 6 months into the future vision of the company (next features, next product). This worked ok because the CTO had a research team that reported to him and the VP of Engg had the development team reporting to him but it was not optimal.

The issues we faced were:

- CTO+Research team builds some amazing enhancements for the product but have to fight to get them into the next release (Dev claimed there was no time for regression testing..but next cycle there will be)

- Dev team thought the research team were ivory tower elites (even though this was not the case). There were Ph.D.s and people who never went to college on the team.

- Research team eventually thought they were superior (reaction to having all their input regularly ignored by dev team)

In short, if your company has a legitimate need for a research or forward looking team, there may be a way to make this situation work, but not without regular political disputes and bitterness between teams. Try to find a way to have the VP report to you.

At my old company we called the CTO "chief termination officer". It was basically the de-staging area for tech people who had enough visibility that they didn't want to get rid of them outright.