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Why I code as a CTO

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Re: Why I code as a CTO

#291

Post by sponaugle »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #161
CuriouslyC wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think CTOs should take steps back from pushing to production systems because there's a lot of I dotting and T crossing that needs to happen with production systems that CTOs don't reasonably have time for, if a CTO wasn't writing experiments and building test systems to determine technical direction, or at least getting their hands dirty with said systems produced by their top principles, I wouldn't trust the…

The last time I worked for a product company was 2020. I was the second technical hire by a then new CTO of a growing company started by a two non technical brothers who hired an outside consulting company to do all of the work. When the company found product market fit, they hired the CTO to bring the technology leadership in house. Early on he would do experimental POC work that he passed on to me to make it a work…

"But as the company grew he had to deal with more of the business side of the things. He still set the broad outline of priorities. But he gave me mostly free reign of determining how and I would just give him a brief high level of overview of my decisions. He did what a CTO was supposed to to do - grew the capabilities of his team."

That is a good summary of the progression of a successful CTO. The capabilities of the team is a summation operations, not a selection operation.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#292

Post by tuwtuwtuwtuw »

zkmon wrote: post #253
tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a bit odd. I am the most senior in my team and when I make mistakes, my peers reject it. If people on the team don't dare to reject code from other members on the team, then it sounds like your team has some serious issues.

In a practical, work-world of humans, the org hierarchies do matter and impact the way these humans interact with each other. Maybe not for bots.

That's just a strawman argument. Or course, org hierarchies matters. I didn't say anything else.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#293

Post by Greed »

richardlblair wrote: post #246
eitally wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can work, imho, IFF the organization has both a CTO and CIO (or someone else tasked with managing the org). I've seen lots of places where the CTO is purely the technical visionary/advisor/final decision maker, and doesn't directly manage the technical organization. This scenario is far more common outside of the tech industry, where you usually have a CIO running the IT cost center, and a CTO making decisions a…

The technical capacity of a CTO matters less then the CTOs ability to stay in their lane (for a lack of a better term). I once worked for a company with a self taught CTO (and not the good kind). They had a number of star players, and this CTO would frequently lash out at them. All because he was getting in the way of them doing their jobs, doing work he wasn't qualified to do, trying forcing them to clean up after h…

Self taught in the programming sense, or the people management sense? Because I feel like the letter is much more common than not in software. Just curious in case there's an expected background you're thinking of when you say that. I have no point of reference for CTO backgrounds beyond generic MBAs or senior devs that either gave themselves the titles as founders or failed upwards.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#294

Post by DANmode »

alexpotato wrote: post #52
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…

This comment seemed the most reasonable of all of the first line comments so far. You could event extend it farther by highlighting that many firms have a VP of Engineering AND a CTO. In that scenario, the CTO tends to do more "strategic" and "big picture" work and the VPE is who runs the day to day work of managing SWEs, setting standards etc. But even then, there are many different flavors of that too.

Total team larger than 50 at that point,

and probably a lumbering ghost ship by one or more KPI.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#295

Post by DANmode »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #196
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because there's no well-defined meaning to the title of "CTO". Our "CTO" codes, Amen. I am a CTO, but spend most of my day coding. I was brought onto a smallish/medium sized company to get their base tech into the modern age, build LOB apps to improve some workflows, and ultimate build a new EMR in that space to replace the one the company is using. I don't have anybody that reports to me. I'm one of 2 tech people…

you are what you do > I am a CTO > "but I don't really do CTO things" so you’re not a CTO according to your own definition of what a CTO does then. my previous employment i was “lead engineer”. i got to pick that title. had a 1 day per week part timer reporting to me. similar company description. making technical decisions. strategy meetings with CEO and founder etc. i was not a lead engineer and ive since changed my…

You’re also what you can do,

in the context of headhunting,

which is the context most use titles.

At any rate, Senior Engineer fits well here.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#296

Post by rpdillon »

tptacek wrote: post #213
dahart wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The one thing I can think of is “organization-wide architecture oversight”, which is a pretty toxic role to assign. I don’t know that I understand what you mean by toxic or why, but I’ve only ever seen the architecture overseer kind of thing in pretty small companies. In big companies, where there are multiple VPs of engineering and product management, that feels like the only time CTO even makes sense, and I expec…

Think about what it says, in a larger team staffed with competent technical talent, to have a single person across all of it reconciling decisions with their own personal mental model. I think it's an attractive idea for a lot of aspirants! Who wouldn't want to be President of Code? But ambiguity is resolved by practitioners at the sharp end of the system.

> But ambiguity is resolved by practitioners at the sharp end of the system.

I've been looking for a concise way to express this idea. I'll use this. Thank you.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#297

Post by tptacek »

rpdillon wrote: post #296
tptacek wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what it says, in a larger team staffed with competent technical talent, to have a single person across all of it reconciling decisions with their own personal mental model. I think it's an attractive idea for a lot of aspirants! Who wouldn't want to be President of Code? But ambiguity is resolved by practitioners at the sharp end of the system.

> But ambiguity is resolved by practitioners at the sharp end of the system. I've been looking for a concise way to express this idea. I'll use this. Thank you.

It's not mine, it's Richard Cook's. Have fun with it!

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#298

Post by IanCal »

matwood wrote: post #111
IanCal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defence, I can see "no direct reports" perhaps referring more to the line managerial side than code responsibility. However a few things stood out in this to me. > So pushing new ideas is quite important because they require intentional, sustained effort. Between org structure, roadmap incentives, and limited risk budget, few engineers can take months to pursue ambiguous bets. That's exactly the kind of thin…

> If nobody had the space, why? You're a C-suite exec, saying something is clearly valuable, why can't you get someone to work on it for a few days? As a leader, especially a CxO, the most important job they have is the allocation of resources. It was clearly NOT valuable if they couldn't apply any developer time towards it.

Exactly. The best reading is that they wasted their own time on it. The worst case is that a simple clearly valuable thing is something the company is incapable of doing. Both are dysfunctional.

Re: Why I code as a CTO

#300

Post by mock-possum »

willseth wrote: post #230
mock-possum wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah 60% coding 40% managing juniors is basically what senior dev has looked like me for the past few jobs, even at smaller (~15-30 employees) outfits

This is staff, principal, or even EM scope at many orgs. I have never seen anyone with a senior dev title directly managing juniors.

Always interesting how much job title and responsibility varies. Part of why it’s almost always best to go ahead and apply and dig into what the responsibilities would be, rather than see the title and assume it’s not what you’re looking for. I’ve been surprised more than a few times about what people think titles mean.
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