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A CTO should be technical

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Re: A CTO should be technical

#361

Post by wpietri »

mjburgess wrote: post #248
wpietri wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if we talk about something he didn't say, it could be better. But even then I think it's a big mistake. The point of coding is to make things for people. If we stop making things for people and do something else, however virtuous that something else might seem, I think we aren't moving in the direction of long-term improvement. One of the biggest roots of low quality is high time pressure. So I'm fine throttlin…

That isnt the purpose of coding, no. That's its purpose for the first keystrokes, but thereafter, when a user has a product, it is to make that product an ideal experience for that user. One imagines the vast majority of "coding" taking place on MS office for the last 30 years has not been to "make things", but to improve the quality of what they have made.

I can't quite imagine you not understanding this from what I wrote, but for me "making things for people" includes "making things better for people".

Re: A CTO should be technical

#362

Post by mruniverse »

codingdave wrote: post #283
mruniverse wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the CTO isn't technical, how do they know what to delegate? Who to delegate to? How do they determine who to listen to?

Think about it via an analogy - do you know how to fix your own plumbing? If not, how do you know who to hire to repair your home? In short, you look at what they have done, listen to people who have worked with them, and react accordingly. Once you have hired someone, you have your own direct experience with them and can judge for yourself whether or not their work met your needs. If they meet your needs, then the r…

How to decide is the question.

If you're a CTO, do you trust your person A or B? If you're not technical what do you base it on? What are you judging?

Are you judging based on their personality? The number of brownbag talks? The feedback from peers?

What you want is for someone to know how things work. And if they don't know, know what to ask. You want someone who's done it before. They have to be technical.

You want your chief of plumbing to know how to plumb. You don't want them to just be familiar with plumbing. If so, the next thing you know a good salesperson will talk them into replacing all the pipes with new wonder-pipes with space-age wonder-clamps.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#363

Post by tinco »

robswc wrote: post #344
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…

I also hate leetcode as a measure of "coding competence." I don't think they're "worthless" but totally depends on your job. I notice that if I'm rusty at leetcode, it takes about a week to get ramp back up... but we're talking 10x better. I don't at all believe I magically got 10x better at coding though... just 10x better at recognizing and remembering patterns. I think the best type of interview for everyone is th…

Thanks, that's it exactly. I wonder if leetcode programmers are actually faster or something, surely someone at these faang companies has some sort of metrics backing up their use of those tests? Or is it just a slightly advanced version of FizzBuzz helping to sort out not just those who can't code, but also those who can't apply themselves and grind through some code challenges without complaining.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#364

Post by nickelcitymario »

spopejoy wrote: post #358
nickelcitymario wrote: post #51

I’m a marketing director, not CTO, so take this with a grain of salt. But I believe leaders should be “good enough” in a wide array of disciplines. Certainly the disciplines involved in their department, but also, frankly, every aspect of the business. Meaning a CTO should also be good (not great) at sales, marketing, cash flow, customer service, user experience design, etc. Being well rounded means being able to gar…

There's a huge difference between a Dropbox and an Uber here. Dropbox is a technology company. This is famously a place where deeply technical leaders can achieve competitive advantage. The whole company exists to support the tech, so if the tech fails, bad. Uber (and most startups really) don't do tech, they use tech to drive sales. Of course the tech is important but it's a solution not a driver. Here I agree that…

For clarification: Are you suggesting Dropbox’s leaders aren’t well rounded? Or that they are and that they also need to be stellar engineers?

I think you make a great point either way. I’d elaborate on that and say a business leader needs to deeply understand the product they make/sell, so if your core product is tech, I agree and see your point. But I still think they need to be really good at all facets of the business. They still need to understand the market and how to promote and how to close sales. Those skills don’t really develop if the only thing you do is engineering.

Take HubSpot’s CTO Dharmesh for example. Brilliant engineer! But he applies his curiosity to understanding people and markets and solving unsolved problems. He understands the whole business. He also understands his own shortcomings and surrounds himself with people with complementary skills, because he knows full well that engineering alone isn’t enough.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#365

Post by rsaarsoo »

tinco wrote: post #313
justanorherhack wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

I've got multiple >1000 star projects on GitHub, and I feel like it hardly matters at all. I'm still being asked to do lots of trivial coding exercises during the interviews. A large percentage of code I've ever written is out there in the open, but somehow it's still not enough to verify that I'm able to reverse a string.

Thankfully, where I live, most companies don't really ask for hard-core algorithm questions - if they did, I would never get a job, as I really suck at these.

Re: A CTO should be technical

#367

Post by dshah »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #364
spopejoy wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between a Dropbox and an Uber here. Dropbox is a technology company. This is famously a place where deeply technical leaders can achieve competitive advantage. The whole company exists to support the tech, so if the tech fails, bad. Uber (and most startups really) don't do tech, they use tech to drive sales. Of course the tech is important but it's a solution not a driver. Here I agree that…

For clarification: Are you suggesting Dropbox’s leaders aren’t well rounded? Or that they are and that they also need to be stellar engineers? I think you make a great point either way. I’d elaborate on that and say a business leader needs to deeply understand the product they make/sell, so if your core product is tech, I agree and see your point. But I still think they need to be really good at all facets of the bus…

Thanks for the kind words. I don't consider myself a "brilliant" engineer. More of an experienced engineer. I've been building software products for 30+ years.

I think the role of the CTO varies based on the scale of the company.

This article on the types of CTOs is useful framing: https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_c...

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