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A CTO should be technical

blog.southparkcommons.com

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Re: A CTO should be technical

#331

Post by 29athrowaway »

citizenpaul wrote: post #324
29athrowaway wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You're job" I could not even finish reading this comment. As a C-level leader in an organization, communication should be your strong card. It's unacceptable that you don't even know the difference between "you are" and "your". If as an employee I get an e-mail from a "CTO" consistently getting confused with such elementary, trivial shit, I would fucking resign immediately as that makes it evident that the organiz…

Good point, I agree. I do know the difference though. I probably copy/pasted part of the comment around and missed that I changed the context. Shame on me for not proofreading my internet comment though. You should probably erase me from existence for my lack of vigilance as punishment...

Attention to detail is a big part of technical work.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#332

Post by random314 »

citizenpaul wrote: post #327
warent wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Things are tough right now, but once we close this deal then we'll be in a much more comfortable position. Your role on this is critical to our success." Is this not a reasonable way of approaching it? It seems to be simultaneously honest and empowering. What lie is necessary? EDIT: slight revision

I wasn't trying to write a business book but what you wrote is fine usually for the senior level employees that get how business works and probably took the job with the understanding of the weight of their position. However you will also have fickle entry/low/mid level employees that don't have the maturity to accept the realities of the business world.

> However you will also have fickle entry/low/mid level employees

You need to read that sentence again. Your comments are very revealing about you and not about CTO level work as you are imagining.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#333

Post by Joel_Mckay »

dqpb wrote: post #229
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obliviously haven't met a CTO at an 8000 user facility. Damage control is the primary Role... whether you want the task or not. Most lack the discipline to tolerate that level of verbal abuse. ;)

I try not to do anything obliviously.

I'd probably hire you, as being lazy means you have likely automated most tasks already. ;)

Re: A CTO should be technical

#334

Post by kragen »

kragen wrote: post #145
sponaugle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no.. the microprocessor stuff is purely a technical hobby, although it was what I specialized in undergrad EE, and I worked at Intel for 3 years right out of college. I have done FPGA designs, simulated designs in HDLs, and even a few really cool 74X digital logic based designs and implementations... and so many on paper experiments during occasional long boring meetings. The interesting aspect of doing microproce…

Nice! What approaches to microprocessor design do you think are underexplored? What surprising mistakes have you made? What design possibilities are just starting to open up? What do you think of Alan Kay's claim that modern microprocessors are unnecessarily slow at running late-bound languages like Smalltalk because they're optimized for C?

I guess I should clarify that I've been looking at weird things like Chuck Moore's Forth chip designs, the Smalltalk-80 virtual machine, the HP 9100A, the Burroughs 5500, and SeRV, but although I've implemented a virtual machine or two in C and carried some design sketches down to the gate level, I haven't run them on an FPGA or a breadboard yet.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#335

Post by kragen »

Keyframe wrote: post #171
kragen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should a conductor know how to play instruments? Of course not, but I was very surprised to read that someone would think this, so I thought I'd check whether it's true. Here are some recentish famous conductors selected from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conducting ; though I didn't make an effort to select very randomly, this ought to include most of the most famous conductors: - Herbert von Karajan: child prodig…

Maybe I worded wrongly, or you've misread or probably both. Conductor knowing how to play instruments (plural and all of them in the orchestra), and well at that, is not happening. An instrument - yes, as often is the case with music, at least to a certain level. What's more important, which was the point, is to understand realities of playing each one in order to understand what, how, and where to take the orchestra…

Apparently in every single case they played at least one instrument at a world-class level, and in at least one case they were said to play "most of the instruments that comprise an orchestra", though presumably not at a world-class level. Hanging out with musicians leads me to believe that probably nearly all these conductors could play most of the instruments in the orchestra at a basic level, because it's totally normal for musicians to play around on instruments they don't specialize in, and there's a lot of skill transfer.

Evidently conductors who founded orchestras without having world-class skill in playing at least one instrument did not achieve the level of excellence of the ones in my list above, and the folks who select conductors to conduct existing orchestras evidently consistently select conductors with world-class skill in playing at least one instrument. Perhaps, as you seem to be saying, they are wrong to do so, and a basic level of skill in one along with understanding the realities of playing each one would be sufficient. Conceivably it's an outdated or simply incorrect prejudice, similar to how almost no women were selected as conductors or even orchestra instrumentalists. But that doesn't seem like the way to bet.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#336

Post by mfuzzey »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #310
jon-wood wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 com…

I had a situation recently where I had a report argue with me constantly over team agreement stuff like code standards and unit test coverage. I explained every piece of rationale I could come up with for why the team chose to do things the way they did. I offered to schedule team discussions for her to try and convince the team to adopt other strategies, with the understanding that if the team didn't want to do thin…

Yes but you already gave plenty of reasons before resorting to "that's the way we do things". And I think that's fine. What wouldn't have been fine would have been to skip the explanations.

Most people, given explanations, will accept them even if they don't agree with them. And quite often they will realize that there is more to the issue than they originally thought.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#337

Post by mbesto »

tinco wrote: post #314
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…

> It's hard to convince the team we are desperately underfunded when on the surface it looks like we're doing fine.

Welcome to being a CTO :) I don't think a single one I interviewed ever said "nope I don't need more funds for devs, tools, "

> Is there any sort of experience/book/theory you think a CTO should have to excel at the job

Executive coaches are wonderful tools to help guide you through the soft skills required to navigate the noted frustrations you might have.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#338

Post by cgrealy »

boffinAudio wrote: post #270
cgrealy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Peter Principle is explicitly about the risks of someone being promoted into a role they can’t do because they were good at a role they could do. People should be made people leads because they are good people leads, not because they are good ICs.

The Peter Principle equally applies to those who have to serve under others who were promoted out of their competence zone. It works in multiple ways: don't allow yourself to be promoted outside of your competence zone, don't work for those who have been. >People should be made people leads because they are good people leads, not because they are good ICs. Good people leads don't lead people whose jobs they can't do.…

> Good people leads don't lead people whose jobs they can't do.

That just doesn't work. I don't need to know how you achieved something to know I want it done. Unless you expect every people lead to have all the skills of all their reports, so each level becomes exponentially more impossible to achieve.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#339

Post by antisol »

bko wrote: post #307
viridian wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current job, during the interview, didn't ask me to write a single line of code, but instead asked me to walk through (in great detail) how I'd go about building a GPS related feature for an application that they own. The application is well known and the problem space was well defined. This was a real (low priority) problem that they did eventually plan to tackle as a team. I also at the same time, interviewed wi…

Could someone post a good answer (outline) about how you would build out a GPS related feature for an application?

1. Agree on terms and accept your consulting offer 2. Listen to / read up on your requirements for what you're trying to accomplish 3. Build out gps related system according to requirements and future plans

Re: A CTO should be technical

#340

Post by Keyframe »

kragen wrote: post #335
Keyframe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I worded wrongly, or you've misread or probably both. Conductor knowing how to play instruments (plural and all of them in the orchestra), and well at that, is not happening. An instrument - yes, as often is the case with music, at least to a certain level. What's more important, which was the point, is to understand realities of playing each one in order to understand what, how, and where to take the orchestra…

Apparently in every single case they played at least one instrument at a world-class level, and in at least one case they were said to play "most of the instruments that comprise an orchestra", though presumably not at a world-class level. Hanging out with musicians leads me to believe that probably nearly all these conductors could play most of the instruments in the orchestra at a basic level, because it's totally…

That does make me think now is it an actual pre-requisite to be a conductor at a high level or just the way things have been. We seem not have much/any counter examples?
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