At what point do you start calling people direct reports? I find this turn of phrase really jarring
Spotted the millennial.
How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
71–80 of 142 posts
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow! What an extraordinarily unhelpful and bad attitude you have
While crude, I believe he is right. I have seen it too many times with project managers and now my CTO. Trying to still code and fix that terrible bug with already too little time. Ends up slowing down everyone because he never can get anything finished, or breaking things on a Thursday at 6:49pm because of the half baked solution he thought was good enough, but exploded in production, which he then has to spend 1 mo…
I have determined that I can still code sometimes and not ruin engineering. Nothing is black and white
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#73to offer a counterpoint to the lovefest going on here, TFA is almost completely uninteresting. the role changed exactly as one would expect and predict.
the only interesting part is reading about the humble beginnings, the dedication and belief.
what would actually be useful to read about is failings, where OP failed in transition to manager and how he overcame those failings. I mean there's a paragraph in there but it's so boring -- "I read these 3 books". ok there's a little more meat than that but it's too nonspecific to be interesting.
come on people, let's not just throw love out there for no reason. it has to be earned. this article doesn't earn it.
OP should read _the hard thing about hard things_. there are many anti-lessons there, don't treat it as gospel. but read it as a guide as how to write something that actually delivers a lesson.
i await your downvotes ... :P
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#74This guy flew from San Francisco to New York to read books in a hotel? Like... what?
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
While crude, I believe he is right. I have seen it too many times with project managers and now my CTO. Trying to still code and fix that terrible bug with already too little time. Ends up slowing down everyone because he never can get anything finished, or breaking things on a Thursday at 6:49pm because of the half baked solution he thought was good enough, but exploded in production, which he then has to spend 1 mo…
I have determined that I can still code sometimes and not ruin engineering. Nothing is black and white
That is good. You know your situation best
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>people running successful startups don't have time to write about it This is both offensive and incorrect. Offensive because it implies that if someone manages to find the time to write about how they are running their company they probably aren’t successful. Incorrect because the startup world is in fact full of leaders who do manage to find the time to write about how they run their companies (kalzameus comes to…
patio11 (Patrick McKenzie of kalzumeus.com) hasn't blogged on his personal site since September 2017. His current blogging seems today to support Stripe's business objectives, as he publishes to their site.
I am well aware. I am referring to pre-Stripe.
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Giving up coding is what you do for your team, so they don't have to deal with the half finished B grade work you did inbetween doing the serious shit they can't do
Wow! What an extraordinarily unhelpful and bad attitude you have
I realise it might be shocking to hear but it's genuine and meant sincerely, I think you're probably making a mistake and because you are cto are not being picked up on it
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>people running successful startups don't have time to write about it This is both offensive and incorrect. Offensive because it implies that if someone manages to find the time to write about how they are running their company they probably aren’t successful. Incorrect because the startup world is in fact full of leaders who do manage to find the time to write about how they run their companies (kalzameus comes to…
Patrick works at Stripe. Before that, he consulted and ran a bingo card creator. I love the dude and his advice has been invaluable to me--but it has been invaluable because he is not a guy who has run startups, he's a guy who's had to make a buck.
Running a bingo card creator qualifies as a startup.
Unless of course we are using the ultra narrow HN definition of a startup.
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#79Which mistakes did you make when you were transitioning from an engineer to a manager? Were there any incidents with your employees that you wish now you had handled differently?
Thank you for taking questions.
Re: How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown from 1 to 100 engineers
#80Alt title could be: how I went from CTO/Co-Founder to the CTO and VP of Engineering.