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

A CTO should be technical

blog.southparkcommons.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 367 posts

Re: A CTO should be technical

#311

Post by justanorherhack »

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…

Maybe you should interview and find out why people do this. I have been coding for 10 years professionally, started coding in middle school and high school competitively. I live and breathe tech because I love it. Yet to work at all the nice companies I have to be able to identify an a problem pattern and implement an ‘optimal’ algorithm twice in an hour or it doesn’t matter.

Also what constitutes an awesome GitHub? Because unless you run a project with > 100 stars it’s little more than academic and doesn’t matter.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#312

Post by arnvald »

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…

They didn’t spend time on making their GitHub awesome because the companies they apply to don’t care. GitHub can get you an interview at a big tech company, but you have to go through some Leetcode-type questions to get an offer.

It started with big tech companies, but I’ve also seen smaller or less prestigious companies doing that, too. There’s a whole small industry around the big tech interview preparation.

And it’s not only for fresh grads - a year ago I interviewed with some SV companies for senior positions (including EM) and I had to go through Leetcode interview as well

Re: A CTO should be technical

#313

Post by tinco »

justanorherhack wrote: post #311
tinco wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe you should interview and find out why people do this. I have been coding for 10 years professionally, started coding in middle school and high school competitively. I live and breathe tech because I love it. Yet to work at all the nice companies I have to be able to identify an a problem pattern and implement an ‘optimal’ algorithm twice in an hour or it doesn’t matter. Also what constitutes an awesome GitHub?…

One to three passion projects, doesn't matter what amount of stars. Some practice projects in new technologies. Some contributions to large open source projects. If you tick all three boxes there, in my opinion your GitHub account is awesome. Instead of me having to come up with questions to gauge your competence, we'll instead be talking about what's on your github, making you more at ease, and giving me a better sense of your real world interests and competences. It's a win for both of us.

At my current company I'll probably pay less than half as what you'd make at a "nice" company though, so maybe you won't interview with me anyway.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#314

Post by tinco »

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…

That's an awesome amount of interviews. Is there any sort of experience/book/theory you think a CTO should have to excel at the job (besides the technical and hr skills)? One thing I think I'm struggling with is competing for financial resources with the CEO. It's hard to convince the team we are desperately underfunded when on the surface it looks like we're doing fine. I always assumed that since I'm a positive can do person that when I indicate something negative it'll be taken seriously, but that's not how it works unfortunately.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#315

Post by web99 »

Good luck fixing that bug you don't have as much context on as an engineer who is familiar with that part of the code, while mentally preparing for the investor presentation on the same day.

Having seen dozens of code bases, products, and failed startups, the number one trait a good VPE or CTO should have is to vehemently prevent over engineering and accidental complexity - via coaching the tech leads, doing design reviews as needed, and making decisions and tradeoffs.

She should have strong opinions on how code should be organized for simplicity, but she should not code. If she can enforce good naming conventions and APIs, she is gold.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#316

Post by westoque »

jschveibinz wrote: post #236
westoque wrote: post #207

I've been a CTO for 5+ years and have grown a company from 1 to 15+ engineers. I agree that a CTO SHOULD be technical but it shouldn't be their only skill. The CTO's skill actually varies depending on the stage of the company and being technical, helps in making decisions in every stage. A core part of being a CTO is to set the technical direction of the company, you are a Chief Technology Officer after all. A part o…

Good comment.

Thank you :)

Re: A CTO should be technical

#317

Post by citizenpaul »

kelnos wrote: post #177
jklp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of responses to this comment, especially these lines: > Transparency is not your job. > You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what > This will 100% require lying or being non-transparent at some point. To add my 2 cents I kind of agree. When I first got into management, I didn't realise how many fires they were, or priorities I needed to balance. Initially I thou…

I hope that's what the original poster who you quoted meant, because I don't see all that much wrong with the examples you mention. No, there's no need to engage people in discussions about things if it doesn't really impact them, or they can't really jump in and help the situation. However, in the absence of some legal requirement to keep quiet, if some employee got wind of one of those situations, and came to you a…

>I hope that's what the original poster who you quoted meant

Yes I did for the most part. I was replying to another persons wording though so many people have gotten out their pitchforks.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#318

Post by citizenpaul »

drc500free wrote: post #146
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…

At this point in my career, I think the #1 responsibility for everyone above VP is to maintain everyone's fantasy of a stable paycheck in exchange for stable work. Once you peek behind the curtain of where your firm's cash comes from and where it goes, you have to live with a deep existential fear that you could mess up a bunch of people's lives... and you don't want others to have to live with that.

Finally someone that seems to actually have some real life mgmt experience replying.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#319

Post by dqpb »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #298
dqpb wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess, CFO's also don't need financial expertise?

They're not saying they don't need to have technical experience, they're saying they don't need to be a current technical domain expert. Of course they need to understand how software products are created, but they don't need to know to optimise your DB queries. That may not be the case at a small 5 person startup, but at a larger scale with a full division underneath you shouldn't be getting involved in the nitty gr…

> They're not saying they don't need to have technical experience, they're saying they don't need to be a current technical domain expert.

No, they're arguing against a point nobody made:

> This misunderstands the role of CTO which is to be a single point of responsibility and leadership for all the deliverables in engineering.

Nobody said that.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#320

Post by citizenpaul »

my_usernam3 wrote: post #135
citizenpaul wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was a factual statement, so no. I think I get the personal attack you are trying to make at me though.
Post reply on HN