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I'm going to sound like an old fart, but it might be better to wait to write a blog post like that after you've spent some time experiencing engineering managem

I'm going to sound like an old fart, but it might be better to wait to write a blog post like that after you've spent some time experiencing engineering management in depth. It's very easy when capital is flowing freely and you've managed a team of 5 engineers to think that it's always going to be like that. Ever been through an acquisition where 50% of the team was to be let go and you had to decide who and then tell them? Kill off a product after the team had almost completed it? Perform a lay off when times got bad? Give a serious, reasoned, estimated answer to the question (from the CEO): "How fast could we rewrite our entire code base from $FOO to Java?" Fire someone 20 years older than you and wonder quietly to yourself if he'd find another job? Manage more than a handful of engineers? Figure out how to outsource part of your development to India for financial reasons? Deal with a rapidly expanding customer base with creaking code? Manage a multi-million dollar budget when VCs aren't throwing money at you? Handle alleged sexual harassment? Spend hours and hours flying from customer to customer to explain your technology? The 'pick which technology' to use part is easy and fun. Now go make that work in a real environment with real constraints. My advice on becoming a CTO: learn how to write. You'll be spending a very large amount of time communicating your ideas.

rootusrootus 10y ago
As an old fart myself, and meaning absolutely no disrespect to anyone, I don't generally think of small startup CTOs when I hear the term CTO. I think of medium+ corporations where the CTO is at the top of significantly larger personnel structure than a company with 10-50 people. In my experience a CTO position at a small company is much more comparable to a mid-level manager or director slot at a larger organization. Again, not intending to disrepect anyone, but that was my impression when reading this article -- I didn't feel like I was really listening to what my idea of a CTO is.
- jgrahamc 10y ago
  Yes, that's very true. Perhaps a good place to start is by not calling yourself CTO.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    In that case there are no C level offices for startups because the CEO for a 5 person startup doesn't have the same responsibilities as the CEO for Leidos. I think it's tempting for people to just say, well yes that's true, but there is no great line that is crossed that makes the distinction obvious.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - rhizome 10y ago
      It would be revolutionary for startups to start their org chart at the bottom, rather than the top. Programmer and BizDev, who get promoted as the company grows.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        So you could get a job as Software dev 3 at Google for 250k, or as Programmer1 as a startup for 75k at a new startup.. why would you do the startup? Let's face it.. title is one of the currencies of a startup. You want me to work for below market wage? Sure. I want equity to profit if we succeed, and I want a title that keeps me from having people hired over my head as we grow.
        greenyoda 10y ago
        "and I want a title that keeps me from having people hired over my head as we grow" I don't think that just a title will protect you. If you can handle managing 5 people but don't have the skills to manage 50 people, it's not going to be in the company's best interests to keep you on as the CTO. So you'll be offered the following options: - Accept a demotion and report to the new CTO - Be fired from your job and get replaced by the new CTO If the company wants to avoid this unpleasantness, they can call your role something other than CTO, e.g., "Director of Development". Then, if the company grows, they can either promote you to CTO or hire a CTO to be your boss, depending on how promising you are.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  As one of those "not-CEOs" I agree completely. I find it humorous how everyone in this thread is a "CTO". It's an overly glorified term used to negotiate certain conditions in start-up environments, usually: lower pay, longer hours, increased responsibility. I make it a habit of not telling people my official title, unless I'm emailing support at one of our service providers...
- HillRat 10y ago
  My wife refused the "CTO" title at a smaller SMB (~250 headcount) because (A) she felt that the company was so small that it devalued the title, and (B) the title has already been so devalued elsewhere that it's actually a marketplace liability. "EVP Operations" was both more descriptive and more valuable, though not a "C-suite" title.
agibsonccc 10y ago
Largely agree here. We're a few years in (nowhere near "old") but I have seen a lot of these questions and these end up being the most humbling, but rewarding, experiences. There's large swaths of CTOs who are only hired to code at early stage startups. CTO is a real title with many overloaded definitions. The duties also vastly depend on the industry/vertical. Eg: I'm a CTO for an infra startup that sells to large companies. Part of my job is technology direction, part of it is sales, part of it is keeping the engineering team happy, and part of it is coding. I'm imagining a CTO for a more cookie cutter SAAS startup would have a some overlap but a lot of differences. A lot of my job is just aligning code being written to revenue and attaching ROI to projects being done. I've become a way better communicator over the years by sheer force. Otherwise you can't get much done. Technology at the end of the day is about delivering value to customers. A big part of the CTO's job is making sure that that happens. Duties tend to change as teams grow too. The CTO title is a moving definition. Company vertical/business model and stage matter quite a bit here. I would say overall, when you're small, you're just doing what a founder does: filling in the gaps till you are ready to hire someone better than you for the role you hand off.
agibsonccc 10y ago
Largely agree here. We're a few years in (nowhere near "old") but I have seen a lot of these questions and these end up being the most humbling, but rewarding, experiences. There's large swaths of CTOs who are only hired to code at early stage startups. CTO is a real title with many overloaded definitions. The duties also vastly depend on the industry/vertical. Eg: I'm a CTO for an infra startup that sells to large companies. Part of my job is technology direction, part of it is sales, part of it is keeping the engineering team happy, and part of it is coding. I'm imagining a CTO for a more cookie cutter SAAS startup would have a some overlap but a lot of differences. A lot of my job is just aligning code being written to revenue and attaching ROI to projects being done. I've become a way better communicator over the years by sheer force. Otherwise you can't get much done. Technology at the end of the day is about delivering value to customers. A big part of the CTO's job is making sure that that happens. Duties tend to change as teams grow too. The CTO title is a moving definition. Company vertical/business model and stage matter quite a bit here.
rebootthesystem 10y ago
This, and more, is where reality lies. The other day there was a thread about the Google CTO test. I thought the entire thing was nothing less than ridiculous. I've hired many engineers and management over time. I don't care about anything someone can solve by having two bookcases full of relevant books by their desk. I care about how the person things and how they solve problems they never had to face before. None of the technologies I've worked with during the last 20 years existed when I was in school. FPGA's, for example, required a deep dive into a new universe of hardware design. The foundation helped, of course, but nobody would have hired me at the start of my first FPGA project, yet I developed technology for my own business that resulted in millions of dollars in sales. The case is similar for management. I've been CTO/VP a couple of times before launching my own businesses. Didn't know what I was doing. I thought it was a technical job. Eventually I would joke that I had more business books by my bedside than engineering books anywhere in the house. A person who is good at problem solving can learn and become good at anything. Be it CTO or developing the next ground-breaking idea in AI. That's why I don't care about resume's and truly senseless programming quiz interviews. They are useless.

rootusrootus 10y ago

As an old fart myself, and meaning absolutely no disrespect to anyone, I don't generally think of small startup CTOs when I hear the term CTO. I think of medium+ corporations where the CTO is at the top of significantly larger personnel structure than a company with 10-50 people. In my experience a CTO position at a small company is much more comparable to a mid-level manager or director slot at a larger organization. Again, not intending to disrepect anyone, but that was my impression when reading this article -- I didn't feel like I was really listening to what my idea of a CTO is.

jgrahamc 10y ago
Yes, that's very true. Perhaps a good place to start is by not calling yourself CTO.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  In that case there are no C level offices for startups because the CEO for a 5 person startup doesn't have the same responsibilities as the CEO for Leidos. I think it's tempting for people to just say, well yes that's true, but there is no great line that is crossed that makes the distinction obvious.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhizome 10y ago
    It would be revolutionary for startups to start their org chart at the bottom, rather than the top. Programmer and BizDev, who get promoted as the company grows.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      So you could get a job as Software dev 3 at Google for 250k, or as Programmer1 as a startup for 75k at a new startup.. why would you do the startup? Let's face it.. title is one of the currencies of a startup. You want me to work for below market wage? Sure. I want equity to profit if we succeed, and I want a title that keeps me from having people hired over my head as we grow.
      - greenyoda 10y ago
        "and I want a title that keeps me from having people hired over my head as we grow" I don't think that just a title will protect you. If you can handle managing 5 people but don't have the skills to manage 50 people, it's not going to be in the company's best interests to keep you on as the CTO. So you'll be offered the following options: - Accept a demotion and report to the new CTO - Be fired from your job and get replaced by the new CTO If the company wants to avoid this unpleasantness, they can call your role something other than CTO, e.g., "Director of Development". Then, if the company grows, they can either promote you to CTO or hire a CTO to be your boss, depending on how promising you are.
ben_jones 10y ago
As one of those "not-CEOs" I agree completely. I find it humorous how everyone in this thread is a "CTO". It's an overly glorified term used to negotiate certain conditions in start-up environments, usually: lower pay, longer hours, increased responsibility. I make it a habit of not telling people my official title, unless I'm emailing support at one of our service providers...
HillRat 10y ago
My wife refused the "CTO" title at a smaller SMB (~250 headcount) because (A) she felt that the company was so small that it devalued the title, and (B) the title has already been so devalued elsewhere that it's actually a marketplace liability. "EVP Operations" was both more descriptive and more valuable, though not a "C-suite" title.

agibsonccc 10y ago

Largely agree here. We're a few years in (nowhere near "old") but I have seen a lot of these questions and these end up being the most humbling, but rewarding, experiences. There's large swaths of CTOs who are only hired to code at early stage startups. CTO is a real title with many overloaded definitions. The duties also vastly depend on the industry/vertical. Eg: I'm a CTO for an infra startup that sells to large companies. Part of my job is technology direction, part of it is sales, part of it is keeping the engineering team happy, and part of it is coding. I'm imagining a CTO for a more cookie cutter SAAS startup would have a some overlap but a lot of differences. A lot of my job is just aligning code being written to revenue and attaching ROI to projects being done. I've become a way better communicator over the years by sheer force. Otherwise you can't get much done. Technology at the end of the day is about delivering value to customers. A big part of the CTO's job is making sure that that happens. Duties tend to change as teams grow too. The CTO title is a moving definition. Company vertical/business model and stage matter quite a bit here. I would say overall, when you're small, you're just doing what a founder does: filling in the gaps till you are ready to hire someone better than you for the role you hand off.

agibsonccc 10y ago

rebootthesystem 10y ago

This, and more, is where reality lies. The other day there was a thread about the Google CTO test. I thought the entire thing was nothing less than ridiculous. I've hired many engineers and management over time. I don't care about anything someone can solve by having two bookcases full of relevant books by their desk. I care about how the person things and how they solve problems they never had to face before. None of the technologies I've worked with during the last 20 years existed when I was in school. FPGA's, for example, required a deep dive into a new universe of hardware design. The foundation helped, of course, but nobody would have hired me at the start of my first FPGA project, yet I developed technology for my own business that resulted in millions of dollars in sales. The case is similar for management. I've been CTO/VP a couple of times before launching my own businesses. Didn't know what I was doing. I thought it was a technical job. Eventually I would joke that I had more business books by my bedside than engineering books anywhere in the house. A person who is good at problem solving can learn and become good at anything. Be it CTO or developing the next ground-breaking idea in AI. That's why I don't care about resume's and truly senseless programming quiz interviews. They are useless.