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A CTO should be technical

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Re: A CTO should be technical

#251

Post by simonebrunozzi »

This post has good points, but it confuses the roles of CTO and VP Engineering. These are two different things, at least in some large organizations.

As an example, I was CTO at VMware (for their public cloud group, vCloud Air). My tech background and experience was very generalist, and I only managed small groups of developers for just a few years. I wouldn't call myself very technical, compared to someone with deep knowledge and experience in developing a product and managing a large group of developers.

As a CTO, I was mostly a bridge between clients and product. I needed my technical skills, but I also needed to understand how to nurture that relationship.

The various VP of Engineering at VMware were amazingly technical. They knew how to navigate the "politics" of the company (which was a bit over-organized and a bit dysfunctional, because of acquisitions, change of strategy, etc), but they mostly knew how to run a large team.

Interestingly enough, even some GM (General Managers) or specific business units could be highly technical, and it gave them a huge advantage in managing their CTO and the rest of their team (e.g. Martin Casado, brought in after the Nicira acquistion).

Re: A CTO should be technical

#252

Post by tinco »

arnvald wrote: post #249

> So let me put it plainly: the CTO/VPE/Engineering Director candidate should pass your coding interview. In fact, they should excel. People who work full-time as developers spend hundreds of hours practicing leetcode and hackerrank so that they can pass the interview, but a CTO who's 5 levels above and hasn't logged to Github for 3 years should excel at it? Come on. I agree with the premise of the article, CTO shoul…

Developers spend hundreds of hours practicing leetcode and hackerrank? Are they actually good coders? And that's required to pass an interview? I feel so out of touch. I haven't interviewed very many candidates, just a couple dozen maybe, but I've never heard anyone mentioning leetcode or hackerrank. If they'd admitted they'd admitted they spent that much time on there, I'd be seriously questioning why they didn't spend that time on making their github awesome.

What sort of person do these exercises? Is it fresh college graduates?

Re: A CTO should be technical

#253

Post by bradlys »

dqpb wrote: post #205
mbesto wrote: post #201

> So let me put it plainly: the CTO/VPE/Engineering Director candidate should pass your coding interview. In fact, they should excel. I've interviewed over 300+ CTOs over the last 8 years. I don't think the author is saying this literally, but i'll bite - no the CTO doesn't need to pass your coding interview. CTOs need two capabilities to excel - technical ones and human resources ones. That's it. No need to get any…

I wouldn't respect a CTO who couldn't pass a technical coding interview.

Are we talking about the same thing? Most are talking about Leetcode - which is a separate skill from the job and requires months of dedicated practice.

I haven't seen any engineer managers pass the usual litany of tests that ICs get. (1 LC hard or 2 LC mediums in <40 minutes) Usually they get a very simplistic question or are given enough hints to get through it gracefully (something not afforded to ICs).

Re: A CTO should be technical

#254

Post by hef19898 »

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…

In defence of "because I say so", it sometimes necessary. And not a big deal in my book, if the person giving the order is also owning all the outcomes, good and bad.

Fully agree on everything else. Additional caveat, I have a supply chain and logistics ops background, so a completely different environment to design and development.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#255

Post by bradlys »

omeze wrote: post #245
wpietri wrote: post #34

Is this what passes for management advice these days? > CTOs have to be very clear with everyone that if quality falls below a certain point then everything will be paused to focus on improving quality. This strikes me as almost Dilbertian. I think quality is hugely important, but I think don't think you can get it with dramatastic managerial showboating. I think it's something that you bake in with all sorts of prac…

I never worked at Dropbox, where Aditya was CTO, but companies like Databricks, Lyft, and Plaid all have code freezes for various quality-related reasons e.g. outages, post-mortems, severe bugs. Are all of these company's CTOs dramatastic showboaters, or is this a lever worth pulling when times call for it? These companies were all unicorns, decacorns at times as well.

I've worked at decacorns that used code freezes... Usually they were last minute "oh fuck we took down the whole website 3 days in a row now and this has cost millions of dollars" kinda reactions.

The reason they had to do code freezes is because all the other practices were such dog shit. (Mostly from a product and biz perspective) Eng was usually driven with a whip to meet insane deadlines - thus the instability and bad quality and outages...

I wouldn't expect any different at many of these other companies. Whether they are worth $1b or $10b or $100b rarely has any correlation with quality of eng output.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#256

Post by boffinAudio »

NEVER work for someone who is incapable of doing your job. To do so is to construct an extremely dangerous, brittle situation.

This doesn't mean they SHOULD do your job, or HAVE to - just that, they could - and are therefore qualified to manage you - while you do it.

The Peter Principle is real, and legitimately a source of massive waste and inefficiency in the world. Simply refuse to work for someone that cannot do what you are expected to do - and you will be building a better organizational framework.

The corollary is interesting: don't try to manage someone if you can't actually do their job, either.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#257

Post by cgrealy »

ianbutler wrote: post #13
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.

I think I’d like to see CTOs have come from the frontlines and decided they had a larger interest in running the technical side of the business and then grow into it. Someone who once did the job and now is much higher level still to some degree knows how the sausage is made and can be a more effective leader imo.

Absolutely agree that a background in technology is important! I’m talking about the idea that someone who started as a dev many years ago is going to be able to write code in a current environment with the same level of skill as someone who does this everyday.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#258

Post by jon-wood »

tinco wrote: post #252
arnvald wrote: post #249

> So let me put it plainly: the CTO/VPE/Engineering Director candidate should pass your coding interview. In fact, they should excel. People who work full-time as developers spend hundreds of hours practicing leetcode and hackerrank so that they can pass the interview, but a CTO who's 5 levels above and hasn't logged to Github for 3 years should excel at it? Come on. I agree with the premise of the article, CTO shoul…

Developers spend hundreds of hours practicing leetcode and hackerrank? Are they actually good coders? And that's required to pass an interview? I feel so out of touch. I haven't interviewed very many candidates, just a couple dozen maybe, but I've never heard anyone mentioning leetcode or hackerrank. If they'd admitted they'd admitted they spent that much time on there, I'd be seriously questioning why they didn't sp…

Leetcode and Hackerrank I think, if they're used anywhere, are very much a Silicon Valley kind of thing. I've certainly never been asked to go near them when interviewing for startup jobs in the UK, and never used them when hiring myself.

They feel very much like the sort of thing you use in an environment where you've got way more qualified candidates than you have open positions, so you're optimising for screening people out. Certainly not a place I've ever been in over here, where the norm is to be desperately looking for even one qualified candidate.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#259

Post by jon-wood »

hef19898 wrote: post #254
givemeethekeys wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In defence of "because I say so", it sometimes necessary. And not a big deal in my book, if the person giving the order is also owning all the outcomes, good and bad. Fully agree on everything else. Additional caveat, I have a supply chain and logistics ops background, so a completely different environment to design and development.

"Because I say so" is a terrible way to communicate why a thing is being done. In senior positions it is definitely necessary now and again to pull rank and tell people something is being done despite their protests, but I don't think I've ever found a situation where I couldn't articulate why that decision had been made. People may disagree with that decision, hell, sometimes I've disagreed with the decision I'm communicating, but you owe it to your people to communicate the reasons.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#260

Post by jon-wood »

jasonm23 wrote: post #237
ctothrowaway8 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment may have been the tipping point into seriously considering quitting. Deep down I already felt it coming on but seeing it laid out like this hit home. The person currently in that leadership position fits every one of these bullet points and somehow remains in that position. All their direct reports just seem to accept this lot in life, everyone else does their best to avoid drawing their ire. I imagine t…

Sounds like me 10 years ago, and I wish I took this advice. If you love technical work, QUIT being an exec, a VP, a manager... do the work. You WILL have a crazy time getting back into tech work, after 10 years, even if you were hands on the whole time. Management / CTO and everything in between is best served by people who are technical, and are ready/aware/willing to move into a deeply political and financial drive…

Absolutely agreed. I'm currently working my notice after 5 years of technical leadership, after which I've got a job lined up where I can get back to sitting down and writing code. The last few years have been great experience, and I have no doubt they'll make it easier to work with management types in the future through understanding the sort of decisions they're having to make, but I have no desire to play politics for the rest of my life while other people go and do the bits that motivate me to get out of bed in the morning.
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