Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#181

Post by tim333 » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

JOnAgain wrote: post #163

tim333 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's no real place in the world for a highly technical business leader. Bill, Larry and Sergei, Musk and Bezos did ok

Bezos is not highly technical. Very smart, and grasps concepts very quickly, but not highly technical by any stretch.

I wasn't sure about that one and googled him a bit. He actually seems more tech than you might imagine. Apparently bachelor's degree in EE/CS from Princeton, where he was Phi Beta Kappa, worked as a programmer, wrote part of the original Amazon code in C and there was this on Quora:

>At Blue he reads every technical memo released to the company. He also participates in weekly reviews, and the more data-rich the presentation the better. He'll stop and analyze every plot and gives feedback to the point you think he knows more about the subject matter than the actual presenter.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#182

Post by qihqi » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

nekopa wrote: post #118

DelaneyM wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr: If there's no reason to get an MBA as a promotion-track engineer, then not only will none of your promoted engineers will have MBAs, none of your promoted MBAs will have practical experience being a great engineer. They wouldn't, of course. And that's really the problem. If you don't have mid-level technical managers with MBAs, you don't get to promote/hire VP-level technical MBAs. An MBA does teach a lot of v…

So why don't we, as an industry, talk to the Universities, and say that we really need a new program, let's say a TechMBA? (Or for marketing purposes, call it a TeMBA - that really rolls off the tongue :) I'd think that there would be some interest around this from the universities, and business is really crying out for this too. From the Uni viewpoint, it is another product they can leverage, whilst still using ther…

Lots of university have MBA-MEng joint program that will award 2 degrees upon completion. MIT's LGO program is such a program.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#183

Post by nibs » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

DelaneyM wrote: post #38

tl;dr: in your situation many people go off and get an MBA. Don't do that. There's a reason there's only one CTO in HBS' 60,000 person alumni database (I am she.) I was a very hands-on CTO for years after a decade of coding, and broadly enjoyed it. But as the teams I managed grew it became increasingly unfulfilling. When you're CTO, you're often excluded from business decisions which have a bigger impact on your team…

A study of gifted people (probably relevant to a lot of people here) found that people who run, manage and/or start companies are the most satisfied with their careers: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:281434/FULLTEXT0... and that gifted people in most other fields (law, medicine, etc.) as professionals are mostly good at what they do but indifferent about it. Start a company is great advise.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#184

Post by JohnnyConatus » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

DelaneyM wrote: post #38

tl;dr: in your situation many people go off and get an MBA. Don't do that. There's a reason there's only one CTO in HBS' 60,000 person alumni database (I am she.) I was a very hands-on CTO for years after a decade of coding, and broadly enjoyed it. But as the teams I managed grew it became increasingly unfulfilling. When you're CTO, you're often excluded from business decisions which have a bigger impact on your team…

I'm an experienced CTO without an MBA but I largely agree. Having an MBA and continuing as a CTO employee doesn't make a lot of sense. I have a decent amount of business knowledge thanks to working at an accelerator, being an early employee at a successful start-up, and consulting.

However, most organizations want one thing from their CTO: deliver tech that fulfills the promise of what we sold. Sure, you'll have some product input, but in most cases you will be excluded from overall business strategy other than to answer "when can we have it?", or if you're lucky, "what are our options?"

This is true for a number of reasons, including:

- Maybe the CTO shouldn't be making strategic business decisions. If it's not a consumer start-up, the CTO is often not the most clued into the market, either for lack of access or because they're so busy managing the delivery of the solution.

- Stepping on toes. In a perfect world, no one would get threatened if you see something on someone else's turf and point it out as gently as possible. We don't live in that world.

Personally, I will most likely found my own company, knowing fell well that I will be the CEO and that my development tools will change to communication and money management. An MBA could be helpful for this but it's not essential, from what I've seen.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#185

Post by im_down_w_otp » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

It sounds like your biggest annoyance is the fire-fighting. These kinds of fires don't just "happen". They're not forces of nature, they're forces of man. Either directly or indirectly, but always the source of it.

Usually a failure of process, expectations management, or both.

You've mentioned feeling a lack of control. Is that lack of control over the fires being set in the first place or a lack of control over being able to appropriately handle the arsonists? Have you clearly identified the arsonists in your case?

Is the arsonist the CEO; by making insane external sales or Board promises?

Are the arsonists your customers; by making product/pricing/support demands that render the overall value proposition of your company moot; i.e. getting you to focus too many resources on basically charity work to "get their logo"?

Are the arsonists your team members; by having a strained relationship with best-practices, consistency, reliability, velocity, productivity, etc.?

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#186

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #96

I have the opposite problem, which is that I think I would enjoy and be good at a CTO type role, but since I don't have a personal background as a coder, I'm not sure how to move toward it. Almost all the job listings I've seen require a CS degree and a decade+ of experience as a developer. Startups, in particular, seem to believe that CTO = lead coder. I've managed websites for years, overseeing design and developme…

Well, if we believe the Fred Wilson post that someone linked to above [0], what you're looking for is a VP of Engineering position, not a CTO role.

[0] http://avc.com/2011/10/vp-engineering-vs-cto/

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#187

Post by jwatte » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

sailfast wrote: post #57

DelaneyM wrote: post #38

tl;dr: in your situation many people go off and get an MBA. Don't do that. There's a reason there's only one CTO in HBS' 60,000 person alumni database (I am she.) I was a very hands-on CTO for years after a decade of coding, and broadly enjoyed it. But as the teams I managed grew it became increasingly unfulfilling. When you're CTO, you're often excluded from business decisions which have a bigger impact on your team…

> Unfortunately, there's no real place in the world for a highly technical business leader. While I certainly see evidence of this in the workplace, I also see that this kind of leader would be exceptionally valuable to any organization. Do you find that the issue here is that companies already at scale have separated concerns so highly that the management skills are more valued (so technical leaders go to startups /…

My take is that, at certain scale, the biggest problem is getting all the people to pull in the same direction. Technical leadership can define /how/ to pull, which can have a 10x multiplier if correctly implemented in the organization, but that implementation is a number of battles with messy human wills, which require psychology, not technology. As a CTO you may be able to hire directors who are good people pushers, to delegate most of that, or even perhaps a VP Eng if your company is big enough.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#188

Post by h1srf » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

DelaneyM wrote: post #95

tamana wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? The mid/senior leadership of the best known companies hires all thr available techie MBAs. There are few CTOs because a 50K employee company only has 1 CTO. Others are CEO, COO, CIO. A mid/senior person at a big company is similar to a CxO at a small company.

> The mid/senior leadership of the best known companies hires all thr available techie MBAs. This is false, and also misses the point. I went through two recruiting cycles at HBS (Harvard Business School), which is one of the largest (~1000/yr) and most representative business schools. I did not see a single position advertised which required actual engineering experience. I was also one of three people (in 1000) who…

I don't think HBS would be the best dataset to use though:

1. The CTO position probably didn't exist until the 90s so you'd need to restrict your dataset to something more recent

2. HBS doesn't generally attract tech people. All of the people that I know that went to HBS(~20) work in finance/consulting/non-profit. Some came from a tech background. Stanford may be a better choice. That was the vibe I got when I attended MBA info sessions at HBS and Stanford. Columbia had sort of a mix.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#189

Post by tim333 » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

bunnymancer wrote: post #171

tim333 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's no real place in the world for a highly technical business leader. Bill, Larry and Sergei, Musk and Bezos did ok

4 exceptional cases aren't much of proof of anything.. It's like saying racism and equality is resolved because Obama is president.

I'm not sure if it isn't the majority of leaders of major tech companies aren't technical. Rometty at IBM also did computer science, Zuckerberg was writing networking and ML software at school. Tim Cook might be an exception.

Re: Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

#190

Post by klibertp » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

koide wrote: post #83

PedroBatista wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. about that non-eating crap low level job, any open position for me? :)

Depends on your skillset, but indeed we are hiring devs for our Madrid office. We are not ready for remote yet. We pride ourselves, among other things, in eating all the crap at the top. Required Skills: C#. Caveat: We want people that like learning new technologies, as we do use some other tech stacks other than .NET's. We will train you if you don't know it yet, as long as you are interested and capable.

Could you help me relocate? Inside EU. I don't know C# very well, but I worked with F# and also learned about some 110 other languages (https://klibert.pl/articles/programming_langs.html) and never considered stopping to learn new ones.

(Mostly just testing if it's really that easy ;-))