Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I code as a CTO

assembled.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 304 posts

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#271

Post by godzillabrennus »

johnjwang wrote: post #261
sa-code wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t particularly enjoy building orgs and figuring out people stuff. Engineering management involves navigating interpersonal dynamics, performance reviews, and organizational design. These are crucial functions, but they’re not where my strengths lie. This bit got me. It's a direct quote from the linked post for those who haven't read it

(Author here) I stand by this comment and I think it’s really important for engineers to recognize that everyone has different places where they gain and lose energy. My team and I have been extremely lucky in hiring Joe, our excellent head of engineering, and an extremely strong set of engineering managers. Not to mention incredibly strong product and user experience management. I think it’s pretty obvious that my a…

I'm glad you are comfortable coming forward and for sharing your thoughts. Not to pile on with the others here but you may go fast alone but you go far together when you build the right team. Being an individual contributor CTO is not being a CTO for a business that succeeds at scale. Don't stop doing what you love if you feel that's more important but it's probably best to step back from being a CTO and hire someone to manage that role so you can code if you don't want to do the job.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#272

Post by rgbrgb »

dbbk wrote: post #129
sa-code wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t particularly enjoy building orgs and figuring out people stuff. Engineering management involves navigating interpersonal dynamics, performance reviews, and organizational design. These are crucial functions, but they’re not where my strengths lie. This bit got me. It's a direct quote from the linked post for those who haven't read it

Then why are you the CTO!! Dude just wants to be a staff engineer

FWIW Carmack did this as CTO of Oculus [0]. Another configuration I've seen is for the CTO to have like 1 direct (VP Eng) who does actual eng managing. You could argue it's a staff engineer role but I've never seen staff engineers actually get much say over org direction/structure or be empowered to break gridlock like this.

[0]: https://www.uploadvr.com/john-carmacks-app-reviews-series/

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#273

Post by 51Cards »

morsecodist wrote: post #198

This is such an interesting comment thread because people have such wildly different opinions and from my perspective the entire disagreement just comes from company size. I am a "CTO" and I always put that in air quotes because I have one direct report and I spend the lion's share of my time doing IC work. I know what I do is not what people picture when they hear the title and I feel weird saying it. I use it becau…

This sounds like myself as well. We are a small dev team of 6 (in a company of 30), however I also have a partial ownership stake in the company. Even though I spend a significant part of my time on "CTO" style work (client meetings, market assessments, product overviews, roadmap planning, third party collaboration, etc.) there also isn't near enough of that to fill my time or justify my salary. I code and review like my team does, but I also oversee technical direction for our whole portfolio and the responsibility for that technical success or failure rests on me. As we grow the coding will decrease I'm sure, but I see a lot of people here criticizing from a perspective of larger companies where a CTO would be a full time responsibility. In our situation the title (as much as I often dislike it) represents my level of responsibility, if not directly the full scope of my role.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#274

Post by 333c »

sa-code wrote: post #115
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #67

Man, if I'm trying to decide which company to work for, and I see a blog post from its CTO crowing about regularly checking in code on Saturdays and Sundays, I'd start backing slowly away. And when I got to the bit that said "AI has made me three times as productive," I'd turn and run. Your job at the top is, more than anything else, pushing down a healthy culture. That includes things like setting an example of not…

> I don’t particularly enjoy building orgs and figuring out people stuff. Engineering management involves navigating interpersonal dynamics, performance reviews, and organizational design. These are crucial functions, but they’re not where my strengths lie. This bit got me. It's a direct quote from the linked post for those who haven't read it

I would say that's the job of a CTO

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#275

Post by CyanLite2 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #67

Man, if I'm trying to decide which company to work for, and I see a blog post from its CTO crowing about regularly checking in code on Saturdays and Sundays, I'd start backing slowly away. And when I got to the bit that said "AI has made me three times as productive," I'd turn and run. Your job at the top is, more than anything else, pushing down a healthy culture. That includes things like setting an example of not…

They brag about hiring on visas, so you can read between that post and the visa sponsorship as a 996 organization.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#276

Post by xnx »

tptacek wrote: post #5

Articles like these are kind of hard to parse because there's no well-defined meaning to the title of "CTO". Our "CTO" codes, probably more than anybody in the company, but that's because he's got a founder-inherited CTO title that mostly just means "he can do whatever he wants" --- we're happy with that, what he wants is practically always great. That's one definition of a CTO. Another CTO type is the opposite: "the…

Title inflation everywhere. "Founder" instead of small business owner of a company with no customers.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#277

Post by tptacek »

xnx wrote: post #276
tptacek wrote: post #5

Articles like these are kind of hard to parse because there's no well-defined meaning to the title of "CTO". Our "CTO" codes, probably more than anybody in the company, but that's because he's got a founder-inherited CTO title that mostly just means "he can do whatever he wants" --- we're happy with that, what he wants is practically always great. That's one definition of a CTO. Another CTO type is the opposite: "the…

Title inflation everywhere. "Founder" instead of small business owner of a company with no customers.

Not any different from being the "VP/E" of a company with 3 employees.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#278

Post by vincenthwt »

scrubs wrote: post #269
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #67

Man, if I'm trying to decide which company to work for, and I see a blog post from its CTO crowing about regularly checking in code on Saturdays and Sundays, I'd start backing slowly away. And when I got to the bit that said "AI has made me three times as productive," I'd turn and run. Your job at the top is, more than anything else, pushing down a healthy culture. That includes things like setting an example of not…

Agree. Let me say much the same through a parallel line of observation: maybe you dont need a this cto or any cto? Maybe you need to move this guy to sales. Goodness gracious corporate america. Can we PLEASE stop with hustle and bs? You ever heard buffet or munger say everyday they do some bill keeping in a double entry accounting system and AI makes them better? Never. Why? Because when you and your org are competen…

Thank you for sharing this. The part about Warren Buffett and the contrast with hustle culture is particularly delightful. It highlights the importance of competence and meaningful leadership over performative busyness.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#279

Post by chipsrafferty »

johnjwang wrote: post #261
sa-code wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t particularly enjoy building orgs and figuring out people stuff. Engineering management involves navigating interpersonal dynamics, performance reviews, and organizational design. These are crucial functions, but they’re not where my strengths lie. This bit got me. It's a direct quote from the linked post for those who haven't read it

(Author here) I stand by this comment and I think it’s really important for engineers to recognize that everyone has different places where they gain and lose energy. My team and I have been extremely lucky in hiring Joe, our excellent head of engineering, and an extremely strong set of engineering managers. Not to mention incredibly strong product and user experience management. I think it’s pretty obvious that my a…

It sounds like you are CTO in title only

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#280

Post by rpdillon »

emilsoman wrote: post #79
rpdillon wrote: post #8

Possibly unpopular, but this is an interesting topic, so I'll post my counterpoint. The question is: what are you not doing that is in the list of CTO responsibilities because you're coding? One of the reasons stated why you do this is "because you enjoy it", and on the list of reasons you need to do it is there are only a handful of people in the org that can ship new product surface area. That's...concerning. That…

> do you find yourself developing the MVP of a particular feature to "get water through the pipes" and then handing that off to some other team to get it to "production ready"? I liked your take and curious to know what you think a CTO should be doing here

Generally, I don't advocate for code getting thrown over the fence, regardless of the dynamics associated with the particular exchange. So the ideal approach here would be for the CTO to partner with a trusted engineer with some leadership capacity (tech lead, staff, etc.) and work through the architecture design and technical specifications for the project and get it off the ground and then hand that off to the tech lead that they partnered with so that they could carry it over the line, possibly with a team. Understanding the vision behind the project and why the CTO thought it was valuable is a critical aspect here. It turns what would otherwise be a low leverage project, mostly involving architecture and coding, into a much higher leverage project that's focused on educating and empowering other leaders in the organization. It also allows the CTO to stay close to the technical foundations and code so they don't lose touch with the organization that they're leading.
Post reply on HN