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Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what?

• unhappycto 10y ago
  Some amazing comments on this thread, thank you everyone. Reading through as fast as I can and will respond soon
• amelius 10y ago
  Can you re-architect the product from scratch? This should be doable if the raw building blocks (modules etc.) are properly designed and easily incorporated into a new design. If this is not the case, then all the more reason to rewrite the code!
  • jpendry 10y ago
    OP not enjoying the CTO role doesn't mean he/she should waste company resources for their own amusement. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
    • amelius 10y ago
      Read carefully: I said only rewrite if the code structure is bad. If the code structure is good, then re-architecting can amount to restructuring only the top-level parts. It can give OP a better feel for how the code is designed, and give them more opportunity to change things in a more structured way in the long term by repeating the process (rather than just fighting fires every time).
      • jf22 10y ago
        Code structure provides very little business value. Ten year old battle tested spaghetti is more valuable than any benefits a complete re-write would provide.
  • reboog711 10y ago
    Over the years; I have found very few valid business reasons to re-write a code base that is still supporting the relevant business. As a CTO, there is a good chance the poster would not be materially involved in such an effort. From a business perspective; something that works is more important than something that is well architected.
    • amelius 10y ago
      Tell that to the Facebook team who recently rewrote their entire front end codebase using React.
      • a13n 10y ago
        I was also at FB when they hit File > New Project on their iOS app which IIRC drives more revenue than anything else at the company.
      • bbcbasic 10y ago
        I wonder, did they really rewrite or refactor. Did they chuck out every single last line of code at once, or transitioned it slowly? Do they no legacy code left at all?
• countryqt30 10y ago
  Did you really think being CTO means writing a lot of code? :D
• drcongo 10y ago
  This is one of life's conundrums. Work hard at getting really good at doing something you love doing, and then stop doing it. My advice would be to find someone or some people that are the adjacent jigsaw pieces to you - a set of skills you don't have, maybe it's the stuff that was missing previous times you ran your own businesses – and then start a business with these people where you can carry on doing the thing you love. For me, I had to do it with someone who had all the networking and new business skills that I so painfully lack.
• ninjaa 10y ago
  I took up a job as CTO after being a lead developer and junior partner at a bunch of startups. OMG what a punishment. I've now resolved to just go out on my own because it's too painful working for anyone else in this curious position of great responsibility but not enough power.
  • tajen 10y ago
    Was the money even good?
• rajanchandi 10y ago
  Key question is WHY did you take up this job in the first place? Do you really believe in the mission of this company or just the CTO title and a lucrative pay attracted you here. If you truly believe in the mission of the company, you're doing the right thing by taking all crap and making progress towards end goals. You are probably not coding because your time is better spent doing what you're doing now. Will you make more difference to the world if you went back to the coding role?
  • serg_chernata 10y ago
    I have to agree. In my experience some of the best managers have been the ones who shielded their employees from bullshit, taking the brunt, making sure we can keep moving quickly towards completing the goals.
    • taude 10y ago
      This is one of the main goals of a tech manager: "some of the best managers have been the ones who shielded their employees from bullshit". If a manager of a tech group isn't doing that, they're failing at their job, and likely have some form of attrition problems, quality issues, feeling of uncontrolled chaos, etc.
• Kequc 10y ago
  [Not the right community for discussion and you can't delete old hacker news posts so let me nip this in the bud.]
  • WhitneyLand 10y ago
    If you do nothing but write code all day every day, you're not providing leadership, not managing, and not helping to others to develop their skills.
• filvdg 10y ago
  Maybe this transition comes too soon but moving from coding in to management is a normal progression. It is another job , but in general it values the same qualities you should have as a coder: Understanding the dynamics of the situation and finding the best solution to get the job done. As CTO you should have the flexibility to find other people to help in the things you hate the most and focus on the fun parts.
• karterk 10y ago
  > I haven't even written a line of code in months. CTOs generally don't write code. But, in a typical startup designations don't matter so much. How different is your current role from the one you were offered during the negotiations? > I thought perhaps being CTO in a startup would give me some of that same ownership, control and enjoyment but it just feels like another job. Do you feel connected to the overall vision of the company? If you did, then you should look at the things you're unhappy with as bumps on a road worth traveling. Since you do have the ownership (through your designation), you have power to change things that bother you. It's only when you start making visible impact, you will start truly belonging. Finally, I would urge you to talk to other senior folks in the company openly about what's bothering you. Maybe you are missing another perspective that they will be happy to share with you.
  • unhappycto 10y ago
    You are absolutely correct, I need to talk with the other senior folks and this question here was my way of hearing some thoughts before going through that process. > Do you feel connected to the overall vision of the company? If I answer honestly, then no, not really. I think it's an interesting idea that will end up making a lot of money but no, the central 'theme' of the business doesn't touch any interests or passions of mine. The role came about via my network and I was much more interested in moving into the role of CTO than the product. Writing that out like this makes me realize that was a big mistake.
• spydum 10y ago
  Sounds exactly like the CTOs job. I think too often the folks in SV abuse the CTO title when they really mean senior architect or engineer. I'll offer advice but it comes from someone with no experience: Take this opportunity and grow from it. So it's not the job you wanted or expected; you can still find a way to be successful. Really get to know the teams, figure out who has the emotional and intellectual capacity to deliver for you, and reward those folks. Good luck!
  • elliottcarlson 10y ago
    > I think too often the folks in SV abuse the CTO title I believe part of it is overall title inflation, which makes it confusing for some people to understand what the actual role is and what you will be doing.
• FLUX-YOU 10y ago
  I would just leave unless there is some major financial incentive in your contract that you don't want to give up (hundreds of thousands or more).
• koide 10y ago
  That's life. The higher you go, the more crap you have to eat so those who deal with executing can execute without distractions. If you don't want to eat crap, you have to stay at a lower level (team lead/distinguished engineer/r&d labs) On the other hand, being that high should indeed get you ownership and control, if you don't have it question your relationship with the CEO/rest of the company. You should own and be responsible for all the technical stuff, that is the upside of eating all the crap you can eat. On a related note, if you are a good coder, you can and should schedule some time to do pair programming with the team to stay on top of things and actually write some code. But only as long as you are more of a help than a hindrance.
  • PedroBatista 10y ago
    So.. about that non-eating crap low level job, any open position for me? :)
    • jjuel 10y ago
      Exactly. As they say, crap travels downhill.
    • koide 10y ago
      Depends on your skillset, but indeed we are hiring devs for our Madrid office. We are not ready for remote yet. We pride ourselves, among other things, in eating all the crap at the top. Required Skills: C#. Caveat: We want people that like learning new technologies, as we do use some other tech stacks other than .NET's. We will train you if you don't know it yet, as long as you are interested and capable.
      • klibertp 10y ago
        Could you help me relocate? Inside EU. I don't know C# very well, but I worked with F# and also learned about some 110 other languages (https://klibert.pl/articles/programming_langs.html https://klibert.pl/articles/programming_langs.html) and never considered stopping to learn new ones. (Mostly just testing if it's really that easy ;-))
• BetaCygni 10y ago
  > It seems to be mostly about dealing with everyone's crap, trying to fight fires and constantly battling with the other managers and tech team to get things done. I haven't even written a line of code in months. Welcome to management! You're dealing with the crap so your people can do their job. If you get to code a few weeks a year then you're lucky. If you really don't enjoy it, go find something else. There are a lot of highly technical jobs that should prove a real challenge.
• JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Maybe its too big a company? "Around a few years" sounds like they have a sizeable staff. So a CTO position there would be very different from a CTO at a new startup. Pretty much like you describe it. A management position, heavy on the 'officer' and lighter on the 'technical'. Managing a team of technologists make you responsible for making the right decision. Too many folks think CTO means you 'get to' make technical decisions. No, you're actually responsible for making sure the right ones get made. Which means listening to your competent team, understanding what they tell you, and reconciling that with the business.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• mwsherman 10y ago
  By and large, you are describing people management. It is quite about dealing with crap. I don't mean that as a complaint, merely a fact. Good managers take crap so others don't have to. Ideally, we get good enough to prevent the crap from happening in the first place. But it is most certainly the job. It's entirely understandable if you find it's not for you.
• naberus 10y ago
  A CTO's role should be technical leadership. If a major part of your role is dealing with everyone's crap and putting out fires, I wouldn't necessarily consider that technical leadership. I've been in a similar situation, and for me, the right solution was having the right people under me that I could trust to fight the fires. You should be deciding how the fires are fought, but your team should fight them. At least some part of your day should be available for steering your team/organization/product. (But code, not so much. :)
• steve371 10y ago
  Correct me if I am wrong. But it sounds to me you are still struggling between a coding job and a full time management job. And to be fair, i think this is what you would be expecting for most of management position in lots of the companies. You mentioned you have done some small management as senior/lead. Then think back, which part do you enjoy when you were there.
• bqe 10y ago
  The challenge of leadership is that of leading people, not of writing code. Dealing with people can be messy, frustrating, and depressing, but it's what needs to be done. As a CTO, I code about 30% of the time, but I expect that to go down as our company grows. Much of the time I deal with people who were offended that so-and-so shot down their new design, or they think their career is being harmed because they can't rewrite the entire product in Clojure, or senior management is freaking out because of one minor bug that hits an important customer. If you can see a path to where you want your company and team to be in a few years, then stay and try to move down that path. It is very rewarding to see tangible progress in your product and your team. If you want to be coding all day, find another job.
• nailer 10y ago
  > trying to fight fires Your leadership should help people avoid that fire fighting. > I haven't even written a line of code in months. That's a good sign for a CTO.
• mxuribe 10y ago
  I feel ya! So my experience is not exactly the same, but I really get where you're coming from... About a decade ago was the last time that I touched any code as part of my dayjob. I was a web developer for 6 years, and I've been either a project manager or product manager for almost 10 years...and funny enough, for the latter couple of years as a dev. I yearned to move to a position where I sat between the "tech" teams and the "business" teams. I thought this was a natural progression up. I was told that I had a knack for explaining complex and technical things in easy-to-digest way for non-techies. So I tried the non-dev route. Fast-forward some time, and I've changed companies a couple of times since then, and without looking almost a decade has passed. My current and last job has led me to the most disappointing moments of my professional career. I won't say depression but feels pretty close to it. In my case i think it feels like nowadays I'm not building anything. The feeling that I used to get as a developer was that I was building something. I totally get that building something means different things between someone who sits at a desk and churns out code vs. people who build essential things such as wells and irrigation systems for some struggling third world country...nevertheless, at the end of my days as a "coder" i still felt like I introduced something into this world; I had such a sense of accomplishment, even if my salary didn't express that. In the last decade, I'm lucky enough to have had something to take my mind off things: in essence, my family. If it wasn't for my wife and daughter to fill my days with joy (and yes the usual family ups-and-downs, but hey, its still a distraction!)...if it wasn't for my family, surely I would have slipped into a deep depression. What makes things tough - now - is that after almost a decade of not touching code, its that much harder to "go back into codding", at least as a dayjob. Ok, I'm stopping now because this is mere blathering (and i should just post on my own). ...Suffice it to state: YOU ARE NOT ALONE with the remorse you feel with direction of your professional career! The only tiny bit of advice I can provide to you: find a healthy mix of non-work-related distractions in your life AND jump around to different companies. The fact that you have such great experience is something some relevant company will find useful; you simply need to tell them your goals, and hope things align. Good luck!
• tomblomfield 10y ago
  I'm surprised that no-one has suggested getting a VP Eng alongside you. http://avc.com/2011/10/vp-engineering-vs-cto/ http://avc.com/2011/10/vp-engineering-vs-cto/
  • TheGuyWhoCodes 10y ago
    I can't up vote this enough, this absolutely true. This is the same arrangement I have at my company (me the CTO), I can focus on the code, architecture, devops and the VP Eng. can help build the team, work out personal troubles with the developers. Obviously there needs to be a good relation between the two for this to work.
  • Swannie 10y ago
    Indeed, or even just an Engineering Manager to deal with the day to day management activities.
• JangoSteve 10y ago
  Honestly, it's not far off from a typical CTO role. Being CTO is about connecting the technology side of the company with the vision and business goals of the company, and making sure the two match. There are great ways to structure the technology and build out the product that don't contribute to the business goals or even the vision of the startup (and can even be opposed to it), and there are sometimes less-than-ideal ways of building the technology of a company that get it where it needs to be when it needs to be there. The CTO's job is about half technology and half business when it's a small startup. As the startup grows, you can't possibly make every technology decision, and so your job is more about getting the right people in place who can make the best technology decisions on your behalf as long as you keep them appraised of what the business needs are driving each of their decisions. And because getting those people in place and managing those people is almost all on the business side, your role becomes more about active business management while maintaining an in-depth awareness of the technology so that you can step in and correct course as necessary. These are all just generalizations of course, as every startup is different. I imagine if you're the CTO of a startup that caters to software developers and code, you probably get to continue devoting some portion of your time to coding. Even in other startups, I've seen a lot of CTO's (myself included) get to actually do some code occasionally, but it's more like once every 1 to 3 months, which sounds about in line with what you're doing. I think the CTO role you desire does exist, but it's in a specific, somewhat narrow stage for a startup. It sounds like you desire to be a co-founding CTO of a very early-stage (possibly idea-stage) startup. I think your desired traits for the responsibilities of a CTO can also continue to exist years into a startup's operations if the startup remains bootstrapped and self-funded. From my experience (both with bootstrapped and venture funded startups), when a startup takes venture funding and forms a board, the CTO role becomes more about managing expectations, facilitating understanding of the technology to the depth needed to those who need to understand it to make the proper business decisions, and more importantly, contributing to and making the business decisions that require the knowledge of the technology that only you bring to the leadership and management team. The smae change in responsibilities happens to bootstrapped startups that become big enough, but the change is more organic and occurs over a longer period of time (which actually makes sense when you consider that venture funding is intended to make non-organic growth occur over a faster timeframe). More cynically, I guess this management of expectations and facilitation of communication could be described as "dealing with everyone's crap," but really, it's probably what the startup needs. If you truly think it's not what the startup needs, then speak up! You are the CTO after all, and that's now part of your job to make sure the company is making progress. But recognize that the business side of a startup is as important (often more important depending on what the startup does, how it's funded, what it's milestones are, etc.) as the technology side, so make sure you understand the importance and motivations of what everyone else is trying to accomplish in the company before dismissing their actions wholesale.
• _pmf_ 10y ago
  > For my entire career I feel as though I've been working towards being the CTO and now I'm here I find it's not at all what I expected. It seems to be mostly about dealing with everyone's crap, trying to fight fires and constantly battling with the other managers and tech team to get things done. I haven't even written a line of code in months. Please tell me you are trolling.
• lwhalen 10y ago
  What I'm about to say may be considered harsh, but I promise I don't mean it to be. Quit. Just leave. Go back to coding. It's obvious you don't enjoy management, there's no shame in admitting that. Rather than inflict your misery on the rest of the team, get back to your wheelhouse where you can be happy, your team can be happy, and ultimately your company (current or future) can be happy. I have worked in a job where the CTO (my boss) was in your exact position (in fact, if it weren't for your style of writing - English was very obviously his third or fourth language - I would almost bet money that you were him, your stories are that eerily similar) and it was a miserable experience. $CTO was an otherwise brilliant coder who was on his first cto-gig outside of 'team leader'. Outside of work, he was a great guy - warm, personable, funny. At work, he resented not being able to code in many different ways, often with the team bearing the brunt of his misery. He'd often make decisions for others to implement, then second (or third) guess himself days or weeks later, insist we throw out all the work, and start again. He'd often be irritable, make rash decisions, have temper flare-ups, ask for feedback then get upset when he got it, etc. It was a bad scene for all involved, but the dude was a walking personification of the Peter Principle. He would have been infinitely happier remaining a coder, and his team (myself included) would have been infinitely happier with a CTO comfortable in a leadership position.
  • WhitneyLand 10y ago
    Here's the problem with that reasoning. As OP implies she has enjoyed leading/managing within her own companies. Before my company was acquired it was thrilling to perform these duties even though it was more grueling. So it's not necessarily a matter of not being cut out for that kind of work.
    • lanaius 10y ago
      I read it more as the OP had their own company where they were in charge of making decisions AND executing them, and there's no real indication of managing employees. I suspect they enjoyed the execution. If they don't enjoy dealing with people's crap and putting out fires, senior management of any reasonably large group is probably not for them - and that's absolutely okay.
• sswaner 10y ago
  As CTO of a mid-sized insurance company, I spend less than an hour per week writing code. My job is to lead the architecture and infrastructure teams in meeting company objectives. It is not my job to personally deliver solutions. CTO is all about leadership. If this doesn't work for you then I suggest your "what next?" is a return to Lead Architect or Lead Developer roles at another company.
• WhitneyLand 10y ago
  Great question and some useful advice. What online forum/community is the best match for this type of question? Maybe it's too niche, but it would be nice have one.
  • arviewer 10y ago
    LinkedIn, with a fake profile if you want to stay anonymous. Stack Exchange is a good place, but find the right sub. Then Reddit. Enough places to find advice.
• toothrot 10y ago
  There's not a lot to say other than: find a mentor now. Start cold-emailing CTOs in the same portfolio as your company. They'll be happy to help.
• hathym 10y ago
  you should try meditation ^_^
• LionessLover 10y ago
  I came up with a story that intuitively shows the difference of doing the seemingly exact same thing on different levels when I lived in the SF Bay Area - where I had ants in almost all apartments I lived in during the summer. The story is about KILLING ANTS. (Note: I lived in mostly peaceful coexistence with "my" ants - they had their roads through my living room and I ignored them, unless they started to crawl around my food. So no need to get upset, no excessive ant-killing took place in the development of this example.) ----------- You kill a few ants in your kitchen. You can do that with your thumb or any object. However you do, it is a physical interaction between you and the ant(s). To kill more you repeat the same physical action. Killing one ant: one thumb press. Killing one hundred: one hundred thumb presses. So the critical skill and the concrete action you will be doing throughout your ant-killing career is the "thumb press". Or if you use poison your skill is thumb pressing the spray can to distribute the poison. ----------- Let's jump a few layers. You become so good you attract the attention of the California governor. He puts you in charge of ant-killing in California. ----------- QUESTION: Will you do the same thing you did before, only more of it? A billion "thumb presses" instead of a few hundred? Of course not! You will never see or even touch a single ant yourself in your new job. Instead of with ants you now work with a) humans, b) lawyers, c) regulations, d) logistics, e) statistics(!!!). You need to hire thumb-pressers, you need to organize poison - tons of it. You need to distribute the poison. You have to create maps and tell the middle managers where they should send their troops. You need to deal with absentees, internal politics, laws regulating work hours and poisons, people who were poisoned by your ant-killing troops because they misused the poisons. You need to collect numbers: Where were ants seen in the state? How many before the killing, how many after a week, a month, a year? Were the measures effective? ----------- Compare the skills you need to control - kill - ants in your apartment or house with the skills you need to kill ants in ALL houses all over the state or country. It SOUNDS like it is the same task - "kill ants". But human language is deceptive - 100% context dependent. "Scale" changes a problem completely. If your ant-killing employees see any benefit at all in seeing you too kill an ant occasionally it is purely subjective "he's one of us", objectively each hour you yourself spend killing ants means you don't do your actual job of managing. It helps when you have past(!) experience - but joining your workers now really means that a) your are not doing your job or b) the problem still is low-scale (small startup - or, in the case of ants, even though you are responsible for ant-killing in the state there only are a handful of houses where there is anything to do). ----------- Or another example, moving soil: If you need to move a tiny bit of earth you can use your hands. If it's a little bit you use a shovel - already you will no longer touch the soil directly. If you need to move even more soil you use an excavator - you now are even farther from the actual soil, and you need to know a lot about the machine, organize diesel fuel, spare parts, etc. If you need to move a vast amount of soil you get to the same problem as above, you don't even see the soil any more, you direct an organization, people, logistics, statistics, etc.
• DelaneyM 10y ago
  tl;dr: in your situation many people go off and get an MBA. Don't do that. There's a reason there's only one CTO in HBS' 60,000 person alumni database (I am she.) I was a very hands-on CTO for years after a decade of coding, and broadly enjoyed it. But as the teams I managed grew it became increasingly unfulfilling. When you're CTO, you're often excluded from business decisions which have a bigger impact on your team than any tech innovation, and the input you do have can be hard to relate to the shared business context of the CEO/COO/CFO. So I went and got an MBA (Harvard). Now I know exactly how to frame (and improve!) my non-technical contributions, have much more context on what "success" means, and have the credibility to really be a part of the senior team. Unfortunately, there's no real place in the world for a highly technical business leader. You have to leave code behind at a certain point and spend your time on people/financial/planning issues. The ultimate end of that road is CEO, and not everyone wants to go there. Also, I'd really misdiagnosed my malaise. What I'd been missing was not strategic input, but the opportunity to build things. To weave together inspiration and ideas into innovation and growth. I love building things and challenging assumptions, it fulfills me. Now I'm off to start a new venture as a solo entrepreneur. The only truly successful technical leader is the founder, and that feels right. My last day at my day job is June 30th. :)
  • sailfast 10y ago
    > Unfortunately, there's no real place in the world for a highly technical business leader. While I certainly see evidence of this in the workplace, I also see that this kind of leader would be exceptionally valuable to any organization. Do you find that the issue here is that companies already at scale have separated concerns so highly that the management skills are more valued (so technical leaders go to startups / smaller places) or is this really just because us technical people like to build things more than manage things? This is super interesting input - I think that on this answer, depends a lot of the future of companies, but also where technical folks can and should target. (Although you mention CEO which, I mean, that's a leadership role too hehe)
    • DelaneyM 10y ago
      > While I certainly see evidence of this in the workplace, I also see that this kind of leader would be exceptionally valuable to any organization. You'd think!! I have a few theories as to why this is so: The most charitable interpretation is that, since technically competent business leaders are so incredibly rare (set aside that every engineer thinks they can do it), there's no design pattern for that leader. Ownership is ritually divided into COO/CTO/CFO, and of those CTO is linearly defined. Technical leaders are excluded from non-technical discussions by default, and norms are extremely hard to break. ^ This is why I recommend against great Engineers doing an MBA. There's just no role at Amazon/Google/etc. for that profile beneath the VP level, reporting trees for engineers/business branch at the second tier and never meet thereafter. A different perspective is that in a sufficiently technical organization (ie: everyone, these days), technology is a giant black box to the rest of the leadership team. It's a big part of the budget and a massive component of success, yet completely opaque and unfamiliar to someone who rose up through sales/marketing/etc. In their minds, the CTO already has an outsize impact, and surrendering to them more scope is scary.
• pmontra 10y ago
  You wanted to be the lead developer and you got CTO. You can be both in a very small startup, but CTO is a management position, not a coder. Maybe you should find a job you'll enjoy more and leave. Or find another CTO to replace you and become lead developer, but that could lead to awkward relationships inside the company.
• fecak 10y ago
  I think part of the problem is that we often see CTO as the holy grail for the technical side of things, where that is the final stop in a linear career path. DEV > SR. DEV > ARCHITECT (maybe) > TECH LEAD > DEV MGR > VP/DIR > CTO If you love coding and solving problems, you may find yourself less fulfilled farther down that line. We're also talking about titles that end up being somewhat arbitrary and non-transferrable once we take companies of different sizes into account. CTO of a 10 person startup might translate to Tech Lead in an enterprise software business. CTO at a startup might still get to write code (I know many that do), whereas CTO at a company with a couple hundred developers might not even see code. If you aren't happy, find somewhere that you can do what you enjoy doing. If this is truly your first senior management position, it might be clear that senior management isn't for you - or this isn't the organization that you should be in a senior management position. You could certainly find Sr Mgt or CTO roles where coding is part of the everyday routine.
• unoti 10y ago
  Learning is painful, and it's tempting to just go back to your comfort zone. You dont really learn much in your comfort zone, and learning often feels a bit uncomfortable. Check out the Ideas behind "growth mindset" for more about this [1]. You mentioned the idea of management being about cleaning up crap and dealing with people instead of writing code. A few thoughts on that. There is a lot of people and management work involved in making code pay off for an organization at scale. Code by itself doesn't offer any value. It has to be in production, it has to be used by the customers, it has to be something that adds value for the customers. And it has to be managed in a way that the code is delivered before the competition gets a chance to sink you. Also code doesn't write itself, teams of people do, and those teams need to be built and maintained and recruited and taught. Making all of those things happen involves people relationships and soft skills. Your job is to make those things happen smoothly, guide and grow the engineering teams, prevent the fires, and establish the relationships that make that all happen smoothly and scalably. It's a different set of skills from writing code, but it can be learned if you apply yourself to it and recognize the value it'll provide to your organization if you do. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing...
• ruffrey 10y ago
  I work for a company and the CTO submits PRs for two projects, and does some QA testing, and helps guide my team's R&D software. It is a medium sided company. For him it is a chance to lead the future of the company while still writing code and he embraces it fully, albeit he is very busy, but you can tell he gets energized by the way he plays the role. This would not be possible without the right company culture. However as CTO you are probably the best suited person in the company to shift culture toward this, if you wanted.
• knodi 10y ago
  Welcome my friend.
• ebbv 10y ago
  I think you're finding exactly what it seems you're finding; the CTO role is not for you (as it isn't for me either.) It is exactly what you're experiencing; dealing with bullshit, trying to get people to do things, get people to find common ground, etc. If you're not enjoying it you should go back to being a lead developer. You may make less money but you'll be happier.
• bartq 10y ago
  hey. meh, general rule: listen to your gut and follow it. It's that simple ;)
• rawrmaan 10y ago
  I did it for 11 months, and I hated it too, so I quit. Now I'm figuring out something that'll make me happy. :)
• sputr 10y ago
  The main problem I'm seeing with this kind of topics is this notion that "management" and "coding etc." are on the same vertical. That as an end result of a successful career as a professional is to move into management. Well, that's just bonkers. I used to be a coder. Now I'm in management and I've learned, the hard way, that management is it's own specialty ... and that the best managers don't see them self's as "above" their team, but the "team coordination & external communication" specialist of the team. The only reason for the extra pay is the expectation that a manager take the brunt of the "external" crap (aka. having responsibility for the team) so that the rest of the team don't have to and can keep working. Which means that just as you need knowledge and experience to be a good coder, you need knowledge and experience to be a good manager. I find the notion of going from "best in your field" back to being "the green guy" at the height of your career as utterly crazy. But that's just me.
  • lanaius 10y ago
    My very large company has 5 lanes. Purely technical is at the far right, purely management is at the far left. Our CTOs do not spend the majority of their career in the company in either lane and that seems to have worked out okay. I don't think people are particularly encouraged to stay in the management lane either.
    • sokoloff 10y ago
      Interesting. Can you put some descriptive labels around the three "middle" lanes as well? I'm trying to figure out the distinction that would make someone 25% management, 75% technical, vs 50/50
  • unholiness 10y ago
    On the other hand, as a coder, working with a manager with little or no code experience is ineffective and frustrating. Having a manager who can wrap her head around complex architectures, and argue/negotiate for one strategy over the other is extremely important. Yes, so are team skills, but I wouldn't call the the path from coding to manager coders fundamentally flawed.
• arviewer 10y ago
  Find out what you REALLY want. Find your motives. Find the underlying essential motivation. That's much deeper than coding or not handling crap. Those are superficial symptoms, not what makes you move. Find a good professional coach that can help you with finding this out. Pay money for it. You probably can spend several thousands $$$ on this. Not that it needs to be that expensive, but $1000-$2000 is easily spent. If you quit this good paying job, while it may actually have the opportunity to bring you to your dream job, it's worth staying there long enough to get your things together. http://simainternational.com/coaching/strategic-life-career/ http://simainternational.com/coaching/strategic-life-career/ This is a link to SIMA, about motivational assessment. There are more methods. This is just a starter, but it may be right for you. Be sure to find an experienced coach.
  • gorbachev 10y ago
    I just read something along the same lines on the way to work this morning: https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/why-i-left-management-the-engineering-technical-track-vs-management-track-abef5b1d914d#.g0cswbi5s https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/why-i-left-management-th... The author was in a similar spot, and chose to go back to the tech track. Her takeaways were: What gives you energy and what drains you? How do you feel accomplishment? What drives and excites you? Answering those three questions honestly will give you a better idea on what kind a role would best fit you.
    • arviewer 10y ago
      Answering those three questions can be really difficult. You probably have a big blind spot there. A professional coach can take that away.
• timwaagh 10y ago
  just take a nice vacation for a few months. ill fly in to do your job in exchange for 50% of the salary. after you've made up your you can either come back or not (and ill be a rich mofo muhahaha). the lesson being: if you get such a position and then complain about it being no fun then you are the problem. its an honor to be the boss. it makes a lot of money. if its no fun, well cleaning toilets for $5 an hour is no fun either but people do it anyways.
• yuhong 10y ago
  >PS. Sorry for the throwaway account but my main account has too much personal info for this topic! If I was a CEO or founder, I would of course tolerate this kind of thing.
• repomies691 10y ago
  > It seems to be mostly about dealing with everyone's crap, trying to fight fires and constantly battling with the other managers and tech team to get things done Welcome to any senior/management/executive position ever.
  • nekopa 10y ago
    I partly disagree: It doesn't have to be that way. That is a sign of shitty management. But the reality is, there are a lot of shitty managers out there, therefore it is the norm.
• goatforce5 10y ago
  There's a story that Woz tells about how he was feeling as though he was being pushed in to management as Apple grew and the anxiety, etc., that caused him. Eventually he realized (and/or someone pointed out) that he didn't have to follow the role changes and could remain in a hands-on engineering role. I've worked with a few people along the way who were senior enough and wise enough that they easily could have found themselves a management position if that's what they wanted. But they either had tried it and decided it wasn't for them, or they just knew they would be happier coding and maybe doing some mentoring of the junior staff. tl;dr: Transitioning to management may be the 'normal' career path, but why do it if it makes you unhappy?
• nekopa 10y ago
  If you are a hacker, then try to just hack the suckiness out of the job. Take a mental step back, and look at the business as a large computer, everyone's crap as bugs, fires as serious bugs and dealing with other managers as a high level architectural/resource allocation problem. Then get to hacking! Refactor the program (your role and tasks) until its running smoothly (i.e. you're happy) then start adding features. Learn to apply (not so shiny) new technologies (management methods, time management, people management). Set up a test suite to compare what you want to what you actually get. Red - Refactor - Green. (Seems like all your tests would be a solid red at the moment:) Do top down and bottom up analysis - make specs for what you want as a CTO, and make specs for what you'd want (as a programmer) from an ideal CTO. Set up your own performance benchmarking suite with the metrics that matter to you: Fun factor, coding opportunities, battle to relax ratio, etc... Just make sure to stay ethical, DRY and most of all, keep it interesting and fun. No black hat hacking when dealing with people. (Oh, and if you know parallel programming, start a new thread called $JOB_SEARCH to run concurrently while you do all this) P.S. I've trained (successfully) quite a few new managers, specifically highly experienced technical staff that move into new positions of management. The most recent one I did was for a global telco hardware provider. I can send you some of my workbooks (for a 3 day course, covers the main basics about moving into management and being happy and great at it) if you want to hit me up - email is in my profile. I pinkie swear I won't out your real profile, or you can just set up a throwaway email if you're really worried.
  • nekopa 10y ago
    Hey, I aimed that ^ comment at OP, but someone else responded, and I just sent them the workbooks. So I just want to let you all know, the offer is open to anyone who contacts me. The only thing I ask is don't mass share the files I send to you. Send to your friends or whatever, just don't put them up on megashare or some shit like that. (I know that that will happen, but at least I tried :)
  • nekopa 10y ago
    By the way, for others coming to this thread late, I'm off to bed, so if you don't hear from me in a few hours it's because I'm sleeping. But I will send out the files to anyone that's interested, I'm just on my mobile at the moment so I don't have the files at hand. But I'll send them out to anyone who requests them in about 5 hours or so :)
• deleted 10y ago
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• misaghshakeri 10y ago
  From my experience, if the following two conditions are met, you should continue. if not you should quit: 1) Are you ok with not coding and just have a technical vision and dealing with people constantly ? 2) Does the CEO respect technical part of the project ? that means he doesn't think that he can imagine anything and then the CTO will do it with his team. Let me explain each point: The first one: as a CTO most of your time is spent on: - [Hiring] this part will probably take 20% to 30% of your time. you have to interview them technically and be able to sell your company and motivate them. - [Communication] Communicating with the CEO and other key roles: this is everyday, you have to be involved in every decision concerning the product. and you should be able to explain clearly why you are against or for a feature in the product (this one takes maybe 30% to 40% of your time!) - [Technical] Macro architectural decisions, code revision, etc.this is paradoxically the easiest part ! it should not take more than 20% of your time. - [Management] Making sure that developers are motivated enough, talking to technical team every morning and trying to understand their feelings and vision and deciding if they are in line with the culture of your team. this part should take 20% of your time. if it takes more than that, that means that you didn't do the hiring very well. so you should spend your energy on firing and hiring again. The second one: Does the CEO understand that technical decisions are vital for the project so he has to include you on any business decision ? If yes, then it is a good news. but if the CEO is that old school guy who thinks that any idea can be implemented by engineers and the CTO is the responsable for any non respected deadline then just run. quit, don't even try to change his/her mindset cause you cannot. usually it is really easy to figure out that the CEO respects technical part or he just pretends to respect. Hope that helps :) PS: Most people (myself included) cannot dive into code and dealing with people at the same time. When I am coding I don't even here what people is telling me. so I cannot be good at management. that's why I think that a CTO should not code at all.
• deleted 10y ago
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• keredson 10y ago
  as a CTO you're not just an employee of a company, but also one of its leaders. you have control over what you do. if you don't like the day to day process, change it.
• gadders 10y ago
  >> It seems to be mostly about dealing with everyone's crap, trying to fight fires and constantly battling with the other managers and tech team to get things done. That's 99% of what management is.
• kfk 10y ago
  Well, the issue with coding is that in theory a good CTO makes way more money. I am dealing with the same problem, though I am not sure what makes me happy exactly. I think sometimes we get into this carrier path thing and just move forward through inertia. Things are good on paper, but in reality you feel like crap. I don't know, I am slowly trying to move away from my current job. I am planning to use savings to buy websites, the idea kind of excites me, which is a great feeling to have.
• snowwrestler 10y ago
  I have the opposite problem, which is that I think I would enjoy and be good at a CTO type role, but since I don't have a personal background as a coder, I'm not sure how to move toward it. Almost all the job listings I've seen require a CS degree and a decade+ of experience as a developer. Startups, in particular, seem to believe that CTO = lead coder. I've managed websites for years, overseeing design and development teams, setting product roadmaps, negotiating contracts, even testing and debugging websites and server configuration. I understand the stack of technologies that make up a website, although I have not written web applications myself. The little bit of code I've written is on the margins: shell scripts, one-off JS widgets, etc. I'm not bad at managing people, and I enjoy it. I'm not bad at managing peer and executive relationships, and I enjoy it. These are the sorts of things that a lot of developers seem to really dislike about elevating into CTO. So: is it possible to land a CTO role without being a experienced and expert code-writer? Or am I thinking of the wrong thing?
  • ScottBurson 10y ago
    Well, if we believe the Fred Wilson post that someone linked to above [0], what you're looking for is a VP of Engineering position, not a CTO role. [0] http://avc.com/2011/10/vp-engineering-vs-cto/ http://avc.com/2011/10/vp-engineering-vs-cto/
• up_and_up 10y ago
  Maybe seek out a VP Engineering role at a smaller company. To me VP of Eng is usually more hands-on technical vs CTO which is more strategic like applying technology to business and big picture. Not sure how old you are but a CTO role might make more sense later in life.
  • ffumarola 10y ago
    My experience is that VPE takes on more of the day to day management stuff and CTO takes on figuring out how to apply technology to solve business problems. OP sounds like they want a VPE to work alongside.
• dangoldin 10y ago
  I've been in those shoes and still feel a bit of that. Would love to chat and share some personal notes if you want to reach out - dangoldin@gmail.com
• dookahku 10y ago
  How do you advance to leadership roles? I try to pursue it when it seems like it appears in companies I'm around but it feels mostly like crapshoot. My other best guess is start my own company, which I think about all the time.
• mszyndel 10y ago
  I highly recommend following Camille Fournier's blog, she writes/speaks extensively about being a technical leader and CTO. Priceless lecture especially that it comes from someone very experienced. Check out this post about transitioning to hands-off position http://www.elidedbranches.com/2016/04/ask-cto-navigating-hands-on-to-hands.html http://www.elidedbranches.com/2016/04/ask-cto-navigating-han...
• programminggeek 10y ago
  CTO is a coding role. Also, coding roles are less valuable than CTO roles. If you like the money, keep the money and do your job well. If it's not about the money, get a coding role somewhere and know that your goal is to be a great coder, not to work up the company ladder. Being a coder is great, but realize that different jobs have different work and different values attached to them. Make sure what you want to be and what you do are aligned correctly so that you get what you actually want. It seems like what you think you want, what you are working towards, and what you are really doing aren't aligned.
• deleted 10y ago
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• asah 10y ago
  No, you're not expecting too much. This sort of thing happens surprisingly often-- the typical solution is to approach the CEO/board and seek a transition: quietly open a search for a new CTO and you find something that matches your passion. It's better for everyone: startups are no place for people without deep passion. hope this helps!
• sfmelton 10y ago
  I love being a CTO. You can design the technical organization you want to lead. If you are unhappy, change the design of your organization. It takes time (and money), but totally worth it. I think the key when you achieve product market fit is filling the roles in your technical organization with stronger leaders than you, and stepping out of those management positions. Plus, you can learn from and partner with these people. If you're a technical CTO, and want to code more than manage/build a team, then hire/promote a VP of Engineering with strong soft skills to grow/manage your team. If its the reverse, hire/promote a VP of Engineering who's technically stronger. If you're constantly being pulled into engineering battles, hire/promote an architect you respect to negotiate. If you're running engineering meetings (ipm's, retros, etc), hire/promote a SCRUM master or equivalent. If you're battling sales, operations or marketing, hire a Director of Product Management with solid communication skills. That person will 'fight' your battles (and probably love it!). If you're putting out fires in production, hire/promote a Director of QA. They'll work on designing systems to catch those bugs. If your infrastructure goes down a lot, hire/promote a senior devops engineer. On the engineering/coding front, I find it super helpful to rotate into teams and pair one-on-one with engineers. You get exposure to their day-to-day code battles/challenges/environments, the tech decisions at the lowest levels, the ability to code/manage daily and respect with your team. You can then prioritize stories/epics to fix problems that you see across your organization that plague a technical team like debt, environments, knowledge gaps, etc. Don't step away, stay positive and solve for the organization you want to lead.
  • unhappycto 10y ago
    This is a great response, thank you. Unfortunately for me, it's unrealistic as we simply don't have the budget to hire all these people. I see a future over the next couple of years where I have someone great in each of those positions but it will be a long, hard journey to get there. This whole thread has given me a lot to think about and I wish I could personally thank everyone. However HN is limiting my responses so it might take a while!
• borski 10y ago
  gdb wrote a brilliant post about his experience that you should definitely read: https://blog.gregbrockman.com/figuring-out-the-cto-role-at-stripe https://blog.gregbrockman.com/figuring-out-the-cto-role-at-s...
• gumby 10y ago
  The best translation I ever heard for "CTO" was "Chief Talking Officer" (from someone who had been "promoted" into the position. Several different jobs can be assigned the title CTO but they are all technical leadership positions, not direct execution. The company should be getting leverage from your position -- you should be enabling the growth of the company, by being th external technical face of the company, by helping direct technical development internally, by representing the technical / architectural issues in the management team, or by defining the technical direction based on the exec team's decisions on company direction. Different companies need different mixes of these. BTW it's often a way to retire a founder without losing their technical input, or to keep them from meddling :-). In your case you were hired on, so they wanted you to use your technical expertise to help guide the company (or keep the tech from getting into trouble -- but even on the execution side, that's the VP of Engineering's job). So if it turns out this isn't what you really like doing, there's no harm in that: you should find something you would enjoy more, and help the company find someone else to do the job they need doing.
• tat45 10y ago
  I was a manager and a lead technical analyst (basically a CTO with a much narrower scope than a full company). I now refer to the nine years I spent doing this so-called "work" as The Lost Years, because I wrote very, very little code and my skills dried up. There are some people who enjoy it. But I found it to be exactly as unfulfilling you described it, for much of the same reasons (spent too much time fighting management fires and not enough time solving technical problems), and it ultimately drove me back to being a software developer. Thank goodness my skills hadn't atrophied completely, but I'm definitely behind my cohort in terms of expertise, and I spend too many cycles regretting the lost time I could have spent growing my skills.
• embwbam 10y ago
  I had a similar experience. I'm a great coder with good communication and leadership skills. In 2009 I co-founded a hip startup in the TV space. I had experience as a senior / architect prior to this, but this was my first time as CTO, let alone any management position. I LOVED the first year. I was solving difficult problems, working productively, coding like crazy, learning a lot about business and startups. But it was just me and a contractor or two. In the second year we were growing and I started to recruit. I didn't really like finding people, but I loved creating a great culture and productive environment, so it wasn't bad. I found some great people to hire and continued to be the lead dev. I started to experiment with process and getting teams to run themselves. By year three we had 12 devs, and multiple teams. I was spending a lot of time cleaning up after unwise decisions and trying to implement process to keep us productive. Our apps and team got big. I loved being in flow and coding so much, I would drop the ball on management tasks to finish features I was shipping. I was involved in too many things: product decisions, partner deals, traveling, and our customer development research (we were floundering and making the wrong product at this point). I hated it. Every time I procrastinated something I got more stressed and depressed. I tried changing my role to lead dev, but it was a mess and I left. After wandering around and experimenting with different things for years, I think I've figured some things out. I'm contracting with multiple long-term clients. The skills and network I earned doing my startup have been great for finding work. I only take projects where I can have a high level of ownership and creativity (no team to deal with). I have been able to work with fun technology across multiple disciplines (in the last year: React, Haskell, Elm, iOS, Swift, Clojure, among others). I do mess around with my own ideas sometimes, but I realized that what I really love is to create products, and I don't like management, or selling things I've created. So I'm most effective creating products with/for other people who are taking the business risk. Not sure if there's anything in there you can use, but good luck! Figure out what you love to do, keep experimenting. I hated being a CTO too. There's no shame in figuring out it's not right for you, but it IS hard to allow yourself to go down in status. For me it was this big ego thing holding me back. Don't make that mistake :)
• tc 10y ago
  Somebody has to do these things. They can be done more or less well. This has a big impact on your company's success and on the happiness of your team. Those are the only good reasons to endure the hardships. You're coming to understand what executives do and how that's necessary in a company, at least until humans find better ways of working together. This isn't something you really see clearly when you're the CEO because you're above the fray. And this isn't something you see when you're an individual contributor if the executive of your group is doing his or her job well. People are paid in part based on how poorly a job can be done. The CTO is a role where real catastrophes are possible. It's a job the rest of the business often doesn't understand well, managing a team the rest of the business understands even more poorly. It's easy for bad choices to do a lot of damage to a company over a long period. If you're the rare individual who can bridge both worlds and do this job well, then it's likely your company and your team won't find anyone who can do this better. And if they have to look, it's quite possible they'll find someone who does it a lot worse, makes your team miserable, and drives the company into the ground. The reason to do the job is to make the company successful and to make the lives of those on your team better. If you believe enough in the company's mission, the other executives, and your team, then you'll figure out the rest. Humans can endure a lot of hardship if it fits within some context we find worthy. It's not an easy job. But if it's a worthy cause then carry on.
• deleted 10y ago
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• BCharlie 10y ago
  As a technical leader, the biggest hurdle I faced personally was understanding how to measure and improve myself in the right ways. While success in an engineering role can generally be described as "write good code" (with all the nuances therein), technical managers are measured on totally different things, and it isn't obvious how to improve most of them. When I transitioned and realigned myself to these things, my outlook changed, and I started really enjoying leadership roles: * Embrace the idea of being hands off technically. I have never seen a hands on technical manager that worked out well - politics will always come into play. Instead, encourage friendly inter-team debate, which you can coach and steer into a healthy dynamic to make the right decisions. Feel satisfaction that the team you build creates better engineering than you could alone. * Focus on helping your team lead fulfilling careers and lives. See in them what they could become in 10 years and help them achieve it, even if it sometimes conflics with your short term interests. * Build amazing products - The leader is way more instrumental in this than often credited. * Create a great team environment that people want to be a part of. * Get a seat at the business table - you should absolutely be a big part of the product roadmap. Done right, eventually you should have sales/customer teams coming to you for advice and input like 'Customer X wants Y, what do you think?' * Create great communication flow - make sure everyone else knows how important your team is, and help your team see how what they do contributes, and how the market/product is changing and why. On your comment about fighting fires and other managers - you can change this. These things make any job unpleasant. I strongly recommend reading The Phoenix Project to get some ideas from an IT perspective - it can easily be read in a weekend and addresses exactly these common problems.
• throwawaycto 10y ago
  As a CTO myself, i see there is a lot of vagueness in the whole role of CTO. Almost all other roles in an organization are well-defined and have clear goals and responsibilities. The role of the CTO varies so widely between each organization, it is something that has to be specified clearly when going through the hiring process or even when starting a startup. Why does this happen? I have found it has a lot to do with the investors and management team. I've seen the definition of the CTO varies as far as "The CTO should be the technical evangelist, super SEO." all the way to, "The CTO is in charge of Product and delivery." IMHO giving CTO titles to the "evangelist, super SEO" undermines the role, because that role does not warrant either "Chief" or "Officer" in their title. ---- As far as myself, i retain the CTO title because am the owner of the technology; in that i make sure that technology is all the things we are trying to achieve as a business; looking beyond the current implementation and plan out how we need to build the product over the coming years. This goes alway down to components required, system architecture, external interfaces and how we can do things better, faster, cheaper. I also write pieces of the code and help out in engineering task as needed. This keeps my competency in day to day ENG high. Involvement with ENG tasks and coding is what keeps my sanity. If someone asked me if i liked my role as CTO i would say yes but there is all the things you listed (fight fires and battling with managers and tech team).
• im_down_w_otp 10y ago
  It sounds like your biggest annoyance is the fire-fighting. These kinds of fires don't just "happen". They're not forces of nature, they're forces of man. Either directly or indirectly, but always the source of it. Usually a failure of process, expectations management, or both. You've mentioned feeling a lack of control. Is that lack of control over the fires being set in the first place or a lack of control over being able to appropriately handle the arsonists? Have you clearly identified the arsonists in your case? Is the arsonist the CEO; by making insane external sales or Board promises? Are the arsonists your customers; by making product/pricing/support demands that render the overall value proposition of your company moot; i.e. getting you to focus too many resources on basically charity work to "get their logo"? Are the arsonists your team members; by having a strained relationship with best-practices, consistency, reliability, velocity, productivity, etc.?
• simonebrunozzi 10y ago
  I've been Tech Evangelist, Chief Technologist, and CTO in the past few years, both at large and small companies. I think it's wrong to generalize - a CTO experience can be good or bad depending on several factors. It is entirely possible that you could be VERY happy in a similar situation, but with a different company. Usually CTOs can be divided into engineering types, and outward-facing types. The former is hands on, codes, handles the engineering team, or at least has a strong bond/influence with the VP of Engineering. The latter is more in touch with customers, does more public speaking activities, and tries to condense feedback and requests in a way that the VP of Engineering can translate it into the product. Right now I'm the outward-facing type. I am enjoying it, mostly because the two co-founders are great individuals and leaders. Let me know if you have questions - I would be happy to try to answer.
• robotpony 10y ago
  You can also look at the CTO role as slightly different style of hacking; you program with teams, training, and planning in addition to setting technical direction and leadership. Many CTOs design and code as well (I do) as a senior-senior designer or architect, but you should think about the meta-programming as exciting on its own. Many senior level architects love to train and lead teams technically, and a CTO often focuses on these things. Senior level architects also curate the technology and design, which CTOs also often own. It's a great role, though it sounds like you may need to grow into parts of it. I suggest that it's totally worth it. There are various ways to cast the role too; many organizations also have a VPE (or VPD) and other mid-level leaders. These roles can allow some flex in what a CTO is responsible for, though ultimately the role is responsible for direction in technology.
• chad_strategic 10y ago
  I have a similar problem... and similar to DelaneyM In 2007, I got my MBA in Finance, which is the worst time to get one at the beginning of great recession. Anyways, I taught my self to code in 08-10 and somehow convinced people to pay me to code! After being unemployed for so long in 2009-2010, I was happy to move down this coding career path cause the money was so easy. But only in the last year or so I have come to realize (after all the money wore off), I have no desire to be CTO or a coder, I'm having a hard time being a coder, lol. I'm a entrepreneur, that knows how to code, is my new catch phrase. I have a enough leadership and communication skills I'm just wasting those talents when I'm just a heads down coder.
• harel 10y ago
  I've been in the same position. Was first to join a couple of founders, built the first few iterations of the application, small group, great fun, lots of challenges, lots of code. As funding came, team grew I became the CTO officially. But then the fun stopped. Technical decisions which were meant to be mine were dropped on me by one of the founders despite my objections (most if not all proved to be mistakes). In the end I stepped down and we invented a new role where I'd be in charge of innovation. That worked well. The CTO who replaced me run away himself after a short while and after that we were CTO-less. Thing is there are many forms to the CTO role and different people see that role in different eyes. To me the CTO is a technical leadership position. You are meant to decide the technical strategy of the business. Decisions from which servers to use, to what language to how things are done, architecture from the top down, etc. Someone mentioned about the VP of Eng. role which I can't agree more - That role is there to support you with the crap. That person needs to be more manager than tech. He is there to make sure your time is dedicated to the core of your position. Not everybody saw this roles as I did which is why I was happy to stand down than try to fight it. I was there from day 0 to acquisition about 7 years later.
• knighthacker 10y ago
  My advice is to realize that you are hired as a leader in the organization. Use your leadership to change what needs to change so that the company succeeds. An important factor for the success of the company (as long as you are still hired there) is that you are doing what you love doing and what helps the company, because it'll make a big impact. If you like writing code and write 2 lines of code, it'll raise the morale of the team and get them motivated to work more. What I am trying to say is assume your leadership and do what you want to be done. If the company likes it, then great. It is a win-win situation. If not, then next steps are clear.
• dj_doh 10y ago
  Thought provoking. I read it earlier today, dropping in to add my two cents. I've been toggling between roles that either fits into 'product manager' or 'product developer'. That included a short stint as a startup founder. IMHO (and experience) an A1 CEO/product/sales/business-guy can't be an A1 CTO/tech lead/research-guy and vice-versa. My operating keyword in this argument is 'A1'. This is counterintuitive to our natural inclinations. Edit: Typo
• rotten 10y ago
  In our culture we always strive for a "better" job. Better jobs pay more, and have more societal prestige and status. In our culture we associate better jobs with being managers. The higher up the management chain you are, the better job you have and the more important you are and the more money you get. (and more money is always better too). If you can make it to CEO you can make 1000x the lesser workers who do not have as good a job. Is that a valid cultural paradigm? Are management jobs always "better"? Should they get paid more because they are so much better and more desirable positions to have? Sometimes this attitude seems like a remnant of a feudal age where the management positions were held by nobility (our betters). Certainly some of the pay inequalities are now forming the basis for civil unrest. The craftsmen are the true heart of the companies production and IMO the rest of the team should be focused around supporting the craftsmen rather than the craftsmen focused on supporting the management. (regardless of your product) I think our culture is a little broken.
• zippy786 10y ago
  Fighting fire is no reason to be sad of if you are in control. I recently quit because I was fighting too many fires, was underpaid and was not in control of things. I'm not sure about your pay structure, but if you are a CTO you definitely have power to change things. I think you should do that. If computing is what you love there is no better place than to be a CTO. You may review code, even write some modules and dictate how things should be done. And you should do it so that the system is stable with less fire. If you are not capable of doing so, you should hire someone who is capable of doing just that. Email me if you want to talk privately.
• alanorourke 10y ago
  Isn't it crazy, you spend so many years training and building your experience to become great at your job. So much so that you get rewarded with a promotion to management. A position you are given no training for. It is a hard transition and most people have difficulty with it. First of all, congrats on the promotion. You need to ask yourself, was coding what made you leap out of bed in the morning or was it that you were building something? If it was coding then you need to go back to your old role. Please repeat to yourself this is not a failure despite what popular media and the start-up bro culture tells you. If you find a job and role that you love you are beating 90% of the workforce and win at life! If it was building then you might still be able to make this CTO role work, just in a different way than you are used to. Forget about technology, you are now a people manager. People are now your tools to build something. Fighting fires and dealing with everyone's crap is usually a sign of some kind of micromanagement. Have you placed yourself in the middle of everyone's decision making process? Are you their road bock for getting stuff done? This is often a result of giving your team tasks to do instead of goals. Activities describe how people spend their time, whereas goals are the results that they seek. Give each team member a goal and some kind of structure on how they can make their own decisions to achieve their goal. For example you can tell everyone any decision that takes less then half a day to implement they can decide. Anything that takes more time than that they should discuss with you. Your goal is to set their goal and then get out of their way. You need to run interference between them and distractions from other parts of the company. Check in with them regularly to mentor and coach them to achieve their goal. Can you empower team leads below yourself to do some of the mundane management? When I worked for a performance management company I posted this over on Quora on goal setting. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-a-goal-and-a-task https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-a-goal-an... Setting a goal changes the conversation from them coming to you with problems to coming to you with ideas and solutions. One lesson I learnt when dealing with other managers, departments and up the line is that you have to over communicate. Everyone is mad busy in a start up and they will not remember what you discussed and all agreed last month. You almost need to market yourself, your team, goals and achievements to get their buy in. Run some regular workshops to get further buy in from them. Your depression may stem from the feeling that you are not doing a good job more than the role itself so keep that in mind. I have gone through the painful transition myself from doer to manager and I have made all the mistakes :) Design and marketing is my area, not tech. Happy to answer any questions you might have alan at spoiltchild.com Alan