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let me tell you, he's the CTO's CTO. all the C level skills, and his technical chops are legitimate and well documented. i was very impressed. :)
As others have said, development is a full time job. It requires focused time and you need to remain current and have context for the state of the project. If a CTO is spending all of their time in the code, they are not doing the tasks of a CTO. If that doesn't matter and doesn't cause issues, you probably don't need a CTO.
I've worked at a company with a CTO who was an extremely talented developer but really that's all he wanted to do. He'd avoid meetings like the plague, never managed anyone despite have several senior direct reports, and would only really engage with others when technical issues came up where he could jump into the weeds in and help solve the problem. Essentially he had the title "CTO" but in reality all that meant was he was a superadmin developer who could work on whatever technical problem he wanted with nobody to report to.
Since July of this year I've been CTO for a small games company, I've worked in this industry before in a more specialised role but this is much broader scope.
I've gone from being responsible for 1 person to 10 which will likely become 50 by the end of next year.
I'm terrified.
I'm terrified because I feel like I will let my reports down.
I'm terrified because a lot of the work I'm doing lacks transparency, how do I tell my compatriots about things that may not come to pass, especially deep political things -- and the amount of work necessary to onboard/offboard people, about "strategic partnerships" and why they're taken, or not taken or any of the hundreds of other things which are changing direction 3 times a day each.
I am technical, deeply, passionately technical.
I will not do service to people by being technical, my days are too fragmented, my worries too broad, it's impossible to dig into a small focused problem and give it the treatment it deserves - and even if I could then I'd be dooming one of my colleagues to maintain it forever because I couldn't possibly..
My being technical is good because I know the problems and I know what can make people feel valued; I can give people autonomy and direction and I can understand when help is needed and how to give it.
However, almost nothing in my work is technical, it's all presentations, discussions, breakdowns, timelines, contracts and negotiation.
The most code I write now is to do cost reporting.
My most frequently accessed cloud console pages are the billing sections.
This is not fun at all (and frankly, I didn't think it would be); but I fear what will replace me if I leave.
I'd say it's important for a CTO to be a CTO. I've been at too many places where the CTO only wanted to be a software developer/architect and would not focus on process, cost, employees, etc. CTO is a leadership role, and leadership means you have to take care of all the responsibilities under your authority, not just the interesting ones. IMHO, too many people chase the CTO title but few really want the actual job.
I personally believe it's easier for a technical person to become reasonably competent at process, cost and other management stuff vs a management person to become reasonably competent at technical things. When I was contractor I saw terrible decisions made by CTO and CIO in several companies because they didn't have any technical taste and ran everything by numbers and processes. I definitely believe a CTO should be…
Strongly disagree with the scope of this. Should a CTO be technical? Absolutely. Should they be able to jump into the code, start grabbing JIRA tickets on a moment's notice, or throw together a new feature when a deadline is looming? Absolutely not. As others have said, development is a full time job. It requires focused time and you need to remain current and have context for the state of the project. If a CTO is sp…
The CTO (once the team is >10 or so) really only needs to be "as technical as needed to make smart decisions". This will vary a lot by company.
Strongly disagree with the scope of this. Should a CTO be technical? Absolutely. Should they be able to jump into the code, start grabbing JIRA tickets on a moment's notice, or throw together a new feature when a deadline is looming? Absolutely not. As others have said, development is a full time job. It requires focused time and you need to remain current and have context for the state of the project. If a CTO is sp…
Agree, also his example of the CTO was "Dropbox". Dropbox is/was basically only a "folder that syncs reliably". For that role, this is deeply technical low-level work and yeah, that CTO probably should be very technical. The CTO (once the team is >10 or so) really only needs to be "as technical as needed to make smart decisions". This will vary a lot by company.
I just became a CTO. So, let me bear my thoughts. Since July of this year I've been CTO for a small games company, I've worked in this industry before in a more specialised role but this is much broader scope. I've gone from being responsible for 1 person to 10 which will likely become 50 by the end of next year. I'm terrified. I'm terrified because I feel like I will let my reports down. I'm terrified because a lot…
*I have never worked in games.