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A CTO should be technical

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Re: A CTO should be technical

#51

Post by nickelcitymario »

I’m a marketing director, not CTO, so take this with a grain of salt. But I believe leaders should be “good enough” in a wide array of disciplines. Certainly the disciplines involved in their department, but also, frankly, every aspect of the business.

Meaning a CTO should also be good (not great) at sales, marketing, cash flow, customer service, user experience design, etc.

Being well rounded means being able to garner the respect of not only the engineers but all stakeholders, from internal people to the customers to the general public, too.

I’m certainly not arguing that a great engineer won’t make a great CTO. It should probably the area they’re strongest in.

But if I had to pick between an amazing engineer who knows nothing about the rest of the business, or a reasonably knowledgeable CTO who is also reasonably knowledgeable on all other fronts, I’d pick the latter every time. No hesitation.

There is a caveat to this, though. Being a generalist means recognizing that on any given topic, someone knows better than we do. So you have to be able to recognize that and defer to expertise, while also completing the picture by thinking about all the variables that lead to a business being successful.

I’ve met plenty of engineers (and designers and copywriters, etc etc) who think everyone else’s roles are easily understood and accomplished. That’s fine if you’re a specialist. But a leader needs to understand the big picture, and no one is an expert in all areas. It’s just not possible, by my estimation.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#52

Post by scarface74 »

pvorb wrote: post #32
system16 wrote: post #22

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…

> 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. The point was that a CTO should be able to do this in theory . Of course they won't ever actually do this unless there's no other way. If your CTO can actually relate to the problems of their staff, they'll be able to make better decisions which als…

I’ve had two jobs where I reported directly to the CTO - the first as Dev lead with people management responsibilities and the second as the de facto “cloud architect” that was responsible for the “application modernization” initiatives.

My second CTO was very technical and up to date the first wasn’t. The only difference between the two day to day was with the second one, I could use terms without defining them first. They both deferred to my technical judgement and I worked with the understanding of how to align my initiatives with the company’s.

I work with CxOs all the time in consulting now. I have no problem getting my ideas through CxOs or architecture review boards.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#53

Post by scarface74 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #28
mchusma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dropbox also completely lost the market they invented to Box, largely because of nontechnical considerations.

As Steve Jobs said, DropBox was always going to end up being a feature not a product.

For the same price you pay for DropBox, you can get the complete Office 365 with 5 TB of storage for five people or GSuite with storage.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#54

Post by capableweb »

citizenpaul wrote: post #46
dijit wrote: post #23

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 was a CTO once. Transparency is not your job. You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what everything else is just "rumors". If you don't they will start getting anxiety or looking for new jobs instead of pressing on. This could actually be the difference between what makes things fail or succeed. You're job is not to be transparent or honest. Its to make sure everyone stays…

> Transparency is not your job.

> You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what

> This will 100% require lying or being non-transparent at some point.

Following this advice is another way of loosing employees, at least I'd leave a company quickly if the CTO started lying about potential problems not being problems.

In the end, depends on the company. Usually the company I've worked in, have valued transparency, so employees can decide themselves if they want to continue working there or not, when there are potential issues.

Not sure who it'll be good for if things are delayed in a project, you might be able to ship a good product but then the executive team is all like "Noooo, what you're hearing is just rumors, everything is fine and all will be good when we release".

Re: A CTO should be technical

#55

Post by icedchai »

cgrealy wrote: post #9

Being "technical" is a full time job. The idea that anyone "above" you should be able to do your job is not only ridiculous, it's insulting to the engineers. The CTO should be able to have an informed and intelligent conversation about technical issues at a high level, but expecting them to be able to write code is not realistic.

If your company is under 100 people and only a small percentage of them are engineers, the CTO better be able to code. (Whether they actually do or not is another matter, but they should understand the details, and with tech, that means code.)

Re: A CTO should be technical

#56

Post by stormbrew »

citizenpaul wrote: post #46
dijit wrote: post #23

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 was a CTO once. Transparency is not your job. You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what everything else is just "rumors". If you don't they will start getting anxiety or looking for new jobs instead of pressing on. This could actually be the difference between what makes things fail or succeed. You're job is not to be transparent or honest. Its to make sure everyone stays…

> You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what everything else is just "rumors".

Sometimes your employees can tell things aren't going well, and you bald face lying to them like this will make them leave even faster.

This is also a great strategy to fuck people over, where if they believe in the stability of the company right until the day layoffs are announced they might have just bought a house or something else that will make the next few months for them excruciating, if not disastrous.

So please don't take this advice to the extreme imo. I'm not saying you shouldn't be positive, or give every detail. But you should be realistic. Save the rose tint for the investors and just make sure people have what they need to do their best work, within your power.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#57

Post by warent »

citizenpaul wrote: post #46
dijit wrote: post #23

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 was a CTO once. Transparency is not your job. You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what everything else is just "rumors". If you don't they will start getting anxiety or looking for new jobs instead of pressing on. This could actually be the difference between what makes things fail or succeed. You're job is not to be transparent or honest. Its to make sure everyone stays…

> Transparency is not your job.

> You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what

> This will 100% require lying or being non-transparent at some point.

I've only been performing roles of director / vp to small/mid size companies so far, so maybe there's some secret CTO sauce I'm still missing.

To me this advice seems toxic and destructive. Vent upwards, yes. Manage expectations, yes. But you're hiring brilliant people who will eventually know when youre lying or concealing info from lack of trust. good luck with loyalty at that point.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#58

Post by spit2wind »

dijit wrote: post #23

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…

Thank you for sharing how you feel. It's incredibly brave.

> I fear what will replace me if I leave

I admire the respect and dedication you have toward your reports (I assume the fear comes from what a successor may do to your reports rather than what a successor may do to the company).

However, if it falls on your to protect your reports from the company, then it may be worth considering how well the company's values align with your own. A terrible outcome would be to compromise your integrity for the sake of the company. If you leave, it's still possible to help those currently under you. Whether or not they would still want your help depends on your integrity.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#59

Post by pvorb »

scarface74 wrote: post #52
pvorb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The point was that a CTO should be able to do this in theory . Of course they won't ever actually do this unless there's no other way. If your CTO can actually relate to the problems of their staff, they'll be able to make better decisions which als…

I’ve had two jobs where I reported directly to the CTO - the first as Dev lead with people management responsibilities and the second as the de facto “cloud architect” that was responsible for the “application modernization” initiatives. My second CTO was very technical and up to date the first wasn’t. The only difference between the two day to day was with the second one, I could use terms without defining them firs…

Thanks for the insight.

I'm wondering what the devs at both companies were thinking about their CTOs. My point wasn't that much about direct reports to the CTO, who might already be used to talking in management terms, but rather the developers who are directly affected by the CTO's decisions.

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