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A CTO should be technical

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Re: A CTO should be technical

#131

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

Maybe the question is what is (or should be) the role of the CTO. A lot of what you describe sounds more like Chief Product Officer (or Head of Product) rather than CTO.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#132

Post by my_usernam3 »

citizenpaul wrote: post #85
stormbrew wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Wha…

> All you can do is fight to get them the pay they deserve

You can also be honest with them so that they can make informed decisions for themselves. The best CTOs I've worked for have been honest people who give you the bad and the good news together.

> However its usually more like 2-4 weeks that the people in charge even know beforehand

I'm guessing you're not referring to public companies with significant revenue. There's almost always warnings well before the 2 week mark.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#134

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

He probably wasn't the right person for the CTO job. But that doesn't mean that the CTO shouldn't be as much of a technical expert as that person is. It's just that that person didn't know how to switch to using his expertise at a leadership level rather than at the engineering level.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#135

Post by my_usernam3 »

citizenpaul wrote: post #87
pvorb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen.

Isn't that what you did?

> Even though the company eventually did go under due to bad investments the owner made.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#136

Post by citizenpaul »

jcheng wrote: post #122
citizenpaul wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you want an opaque company where politics drive individual success >you want a transparent company where employees respect their leaders and where the best insight wins? The comment I replied to has very startup company silicon valley skew to it naive of the majority of the world. Very few of us are in any position to determine or change the political/cultural/driving forces of a company we have to work at. Usua…

What part of the world are you from?

USA East coast.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#137

Post by kelnos »

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 everything else is just "rumors". If you don't they will start getting anxiety or looking for new jobs instead of pressing on.

Gross. I worked at at company where the CEO and CTO were hiding important things about the company from employees. When we found out, we felt lied to and betrayed, and there was a mass exodus. The company folded less than a year later.

I'm not saying leadership should be telling employees every little tiny thing. (And certainly some things just cannot be talked about in early stages of the deal, like funding rounds and being acquired.) But employees should have a pretty good handle on the health of the company and what's going on at a high level.

If employees get anxiety or start looking for new jobs because the executive team is being truthful, then either a) the company is doomed, and only an asshole executive would lie to keep employees around, or b) the company is just in a difficult spot, but leadership is not doing a good job of communicating the solid, likely-to-succeed plans in place to get things back on track.

I refuse to work for leadership teams who are not transparent. If they don't think they can trust me to act well in the face of difficult information, then I don't see why I should trust them to run the company that's responsible for my paycheck and livelihood.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#138

Post by citizenpaul »

my_usernam3 wrote: post #132
citizenpaul wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Wha…

> All you can do is fight to get them the pay they deserve You can also be honest with them so that they can make informed decisions for themselves. The best CTOs I've worked for have been honest people who give you the bad and the good news together. > However its usually more like 2-4 weeks that the people in charge even know beforehand I'm guessing you're not referring to public companies with significant revenue.…

>I'm guessing you're not referring to public companies with significant revenue

>Layoffs at non Fortune 500

Yeah Literally what I said in my comment.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#139

Post by warent »

citizenpaul wrote: post #127
warent wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be quite a lot wrong in this post in my humble opinion... In brief, this reads as: * Allowing rumor/politics to become malignant through deceit rather than healing through truth * Dismissing responsibility for other people's livelihood because "hey its not my fault they didn't save money in case I throw them in the guillotine" * Using lack of information as a reason to lie, rather than just telling you…

You are ignoring a hard reality. Other people probably want your job. If you look weak/uncertain/outofloop it will encourage them to come after you and give them ammo against you. Making your job at best more difficult or at worst a full blown power struggle. Sorry but the reality of human nature is tough.

That is certainly one way to operate in the world! It is just not how my world works though.

If someone is actually better suited for a role than I am, then let them have it. I'll find another role and keep growing. Where is the problem?

If some team makes the mistake of confusing trust and openness with weakness, then good riddance, I'm better off with a different team.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#140

Post by insane_dreamer »

Agreed.

It's a little like an orchestra conductor. They don't (usually) play an instrument on stage, but they certainly can, and they have a deep understanding of each instrument in the orchestra, its function, potential and how it is operated (so te speak), and of the score itself.

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