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A CTO should be technical

blog.southparkcommons.com

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Re: A CTO should be technical

#81

Post by baby »

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…

If I can give an advice quite different from the other comments: don't sweat it. You're not becoming responsible for the success of your team or your company, you're just taking a different role. Things would probably work fine without you. Hell, companies can run for months and years without CEOs (one of my previous company did).

What you can do is two fold: be technically involved (this is the topic of this thread) and be a good leader. The latter means a lot of things, but IMO it also means transparency. I'm really sad to see other comments saying that your role is to not be transparent, I totally disagree.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#82

Post by chpmrc »

I have a really hard time working for someone who isn't technical, regardless of their role. I also have a hard time buying into the narrative that someone can be just a good manager.

As an engineer and a manager I took my time to understand the basics of management, design, marketing, business development etc. to have educated conversations while building a product so I don't see why someone in those roles shouldn't do the same.

I would also feel the need to catch up with whoever the best engineer seems to be on my team because I'd just assume they wouldn't respect me if they perceived me to be vastly less competent (a degree of technical incompetence can be offset by good soft skills of course).

Either there's a misconception about how complex "technical" stuff is, that prevents those (smart) people from touching it with a 10 foot pole, or (conventionally) technical stuff is indeed more complex than (conventionally) non technical stuff.

I lean more towards the latter (after all market demand and compensation are a good indicator of that) but I'd be very happy to be shown that's not the case. I know plenty of engineers that are successful "solopreneurs", I don't know anyone who isn't technical and managed to do the same without a technical cofounder.

Not claiming "engineering is easier than marketing", just that, on average, technical people can do 80% of what's required to build and launch a product, non technical people can do around 20% (although the ratio might change once these no code tools become more popular / powerful).

Re: A CTO should be technical

#83

Post by CallMeJim »

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…

This reads like a LinkedIn post.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#84

Post by baby »

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

I would argue the opposite: transparency is one of the biggest part of your job. You're not in a leadership position, and it's your choice: do you want an opaque company where politics drive individual success? Or do you want a transparent company where employees respect their leaders and where the best insight wins?

Re: A CTO should be technical

#85

Post by citizenpaul »

stormbrew wrote: post #56
citizenpaul wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I actually wrote several responses and realized I was rambling on because of just how difficult it is to explain the reality of being in a decision making role. Rumors and politics are far far more prevalent than any acutal problems that will affect your people.

It is not your job to be responsible for other peoples personal lives, you are not the messiah. All you can do is fight to get them the pay they deserve. What they do with the money you have no control over anyway.

Layoffs at non Fortune 500 companies generally have less warning than anything can be done about anyway. Sure if its budgeted at Pfizer 6mo in advance your an ahole for not telling people. However its usually more like 2-4 weeks that the people in charge even know beforehand. ALso remenber we are talking about CTO. Its the CFO that knows the truth about the finances and may be hiding it from you as the CTO.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#86

Post by scarface74 »

beachy wrote: post #40
spaetzleesser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. So true. CTO being so far upstream, mistakes made here through disconnection between the rubber and the road have compound effects downstream. It's the sort of role where bad decisions have huge, company-ending ramifications. "I talked to m…

You realize that is the very edict that basically started at Amazon and came straight from Jeff Bezos in 2001? I think it worked out okay there (here).

Re: A CTO should be technical

#87

Post by citizenpaul »

pvorb wrote: post #68
citizenpaul wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Eventually some of those reports will hate you as well even if you do everything perfectly. Its inevitable from being in charge. You may not find out till running into them years later and they just shrug you off when you try to say hi. Maybe they simply found out that you kept lying to them?

That was not the reason.

I know its hard to understand if you are never in such a role. People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. Even if they are the cause of those bad things.

I had one guy that got obsessed with crypto and was doing crypto trading instead of his work, not showing up/logging in, not making deadlines. He went off on me for like 30 min when I fired him and never spoke to me again despite warnings and discussions about the problem before getting fired for one example. In his irrational opinion I was holding him back from getting rich by expecting him to do his job.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#88

Post by colechristensen »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #43
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've reported directly to good CTOs and really bad ones. The shitty ones: - Either never built trust or broke trust. - Were impulsive and reactionary. - Didn't rely on the expertise and skills of their reports as much as they told them what to do because they already knew everything. Didn't ask questions. Gave orders. - Literally used the words, "because I said so". - Believed that they were the only one doing any re…

The challenge in technical leadership is letting go of the specifics and delegating them and only in very rare specific circumstances issuing orders.

There are a lot of "person who did everything" types who end up in leadership positions who try very hard to continue doing everything of any importance instead of appropriate delegation and leadership instead of control. I've had that problem, it's hard to let go.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#89

Post by beachy »

scarface74 wrote: post #86
beachy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So true. CTO being so far upstream, mistakes made here through disconnection between the rubber and the road have compound effects downstream. It's the sort of role where bad decisions have huge, company-ending ramifications. "I talked to m…

You realize that is the very edict that basically started at Amazon and came straight from Jeff Bezos in 2001? I think it worked out okay there (here).

I wasn't saying microservices are bad (personally I love them, maybe too much:). Just that making technology decisions based on someone's else's anecdotes, in the absence of any technical understanding, is a bad way to go.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#90

Post by citizenpaul »

baby wrote: post #84
citizenpaul wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 I would argue the opposite: transparency is one of the biggest part of your job. You're not in a leadership position, and it's your choice: do you want an opaque company where politics drive individual success? Or do you want a transparent company where employees respect their leaders and where the best insight wins?

Real life is not fair.

If the company initiative is to be transparent then sure you can be. However that is the vast minority of companies. Though people on HN may have a skew to thinking the opposite.

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