Why I code as a CTO

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

I think the linked https://blog.gregbrockman.com/figuring-out-the-cto-role-at-s... is much more interesting, it gives more actionable detail and advice.

As Brockman says, you need a very strong VP Eng to make this possible.

It’s an important milestone for the technical founder(s) to decide if they are going to hang up their spurs and become a manager/leader, or keep doing the technical work. (A common failure mode is trying to do both.)

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 working through the weekend. If you're doing it, your reports and their reports will feel the need to do it, too. Don't. And if you do anyway, certainly don't brag about it!

And then listen to this insanity:

> Our team had considered potentially having the customer build their own integration on top of our API in order to get around this requirement, and scoping it out properly would have required many meetings across product, legal, and engineering. I built and shipped a working version in a day. It wasn’t perfect, but it solved their immediate problem and preserved goodwill with the customer.

That's something you're willing to share out loud? Your company's technical process (which you're fully in control of, Mr. CTO) is so cumbersome that it seriously hinders your ability to execute, but, being above that process, you personally choose to circumvent it, foregoing required legal or engineering reviews, and shipping it immediately to your critically important customer? If one of the engineers who worked under you did that, you'd probably have fired him.

I always have wondered a bit, do people in other fields have this, too? Like do people expect the CMO at a pharmaceutical company to still be running clinical trials or whatever to, I dunno, maintain their street cred? Or is it just tech companies where people seem to have existential angst about managers doing manager instead of "technical" work?