I'm a director of engineering, not a VP, but there isn't a higher engineering position at our startup, so it's just a matter of semantics. I sort of lucked into

I'm a director of engineering, not a VP, but there isn't a higher engineering position at our startup, so it's just a matter of semantics. I sort of lucked into this position when the CTO left the company suddenly due to personal reasons. Rather than bringing in a new CTO right away, I convinced management to promote me to director to ease the transition. So far it's been a year, and they haven't even started the search for a CTO, since I handle most of those duties (though the time may come where we need someone with more experience as we grow and expand). The most important skills for my position are being able to quickly spot talent (or lack thereof) in other engineers (necessary for quick hiring and firing), the ability to mentor and develop other engineers, especially when they are possibly more talented than I am, and the ability to communicate with the rest of the management team. This last one is the most important of the three listed. Part of that is giving good estimates for level of effort, time to market, expenses, etc. Being in a leadership role, you have to be able to trust your team to get the coding work done so you can focus on bigger picture things like managing, architecture, etc. A good VP will not be coding most of the time.