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The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two devs that lead daily work - and code review for such basic issues (or use a code analyser) to det

The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two devs that lead daily work - and code review for such basic issues (or use a code analyser) to detect sql, xss, xsrf, session management, password based user data encryption, message encryption, and other trivialities. Not that i like gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes like this one are then blamed on ”foreign agents” and other media bollox.

gkoberger 6y ago
You're right in general, however I think you're over-estimating the size of Gab. In this case, it's more of a "everyone gets a CxO title because there's fewer than 26 of us" type thing.
claytongulick 6y ago
I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most technical. I think we see a lot of tech company failures when the CTO is just a manager type that doesn't understand the technology and doesn't have the ability to contribute to it.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  In every company I've ever worked for, and any company I know these kinds of things about, the position of a CTO is a high-level managerial role, with lots and lots of budgeting strategizing communcating yadda yadda, so you had better have someone on that seat who is a good manager and good at high-level, big-picture thinking and good with people and a very strong communicator. If you require that person to also be the most technical person in the room at all times, whew. Either that's a very tall order or recruiting/hiring needs work. More technical than that person who's spent a career getting absolutely ace in their niche? More technical than the data scientist who spends 8 hours a day digging really deep into bleeding edge neural networks? I'm totally with you that a manager should be able to understand the thing they manage to a certain (not too shallow) depth, but you hire experts for a reason, and in ordinary circumstances, and in an ordinary IT department, a C-level manager should not strive to out-expert the experts under their purview. That kind of micromanagement/smartassery will just drive away the experts, and then you need a new CTO and new experts and maybe go bust. Exception to the rule: If you're in a startup where the IT departmend consists of a CTO and one guy remoting in from Bulgaria who runs the servers and is really really cheap, you as the CTO actually should be the most technical person in the room. But once you hire the first actual expert, you should take a step back and get more big-picture-y.
- smt88 6y ago
  I am the CTO of my company and the "most technical" for sure, but I'm not the "most up to date". I haven't built an JS frontend with Vue, React, and Svelte like one of my team has. Basically I set the team values, priorities, and processes, but I do need a lot of my team to have deeper knowledge of certain things than I do.
- kcartlidge 6y ago
  > I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most technical. For a decent size company I'd hope the same, but with the proviso that over time any specific industry experience will degrade to a more general understanding, which is fine. And if they don't have the experience they delegate. So bearing in mind the original story, either the CTO should be at least decently technical enough to avoid composing SQL like that commit does, or the CTO should not be committing code in the first place.
yikesshescute 6y ago
> The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two devs that lead daily work Your comment is complete nonsense. With good reasons (personnel, external demands, goals), the working dynamic varies widely from company to company. Presumably, you’ve never worked there and don’t have any clue why they were structured as such. You’re just repeating crap you’ve seen other people write about CTOs. > Not that i like gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes like this one are then blamed on ”foreign agents” and other media bollox. And I’m not defending someone else’s coding mistakes, too busy worrying about my own. > (or use a code analyser) Also, lol, you might as well have said “or use voodoo”.

gkoberger 6y ago

You're right in general, however I think you're over-estimating the size of Gab. In this case, it's more of a "everyone gets a CxO title because there's fewer than 26 of us" type thing.

claytongulick 6y ago

I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most technical. I think we see a lot of tech company failures when the CTO is just a manager type that doesn't understand the technology and doesn't have the ability to contribute to it.

dividedbyzero 6y ago
In every company I've ever worked for, and any company I know these kinds of things about, the position of a CTO is a high-level managerial role, with lots and lots of budgeting strategizing communcating yadda yadda, so you had better have someone on that seat who is a good manager and good at high-level, big-picture thinking and good with people and a very strong communicator. If you require that person to also be the most technical person in the room at all times, whew. Either that's a very tall order or recruiting/hiring needs work. More technical than that person who's spent a career getting absolutely ace in their niche? More technical than the data scientist who spends 8 hours a day digging really deep into bleeding edge neural networks? I'm totally with you that a manager should be able to understand the thing they manage to a certain (not too shallow) depth, but you hire experts for a reason, and in ordinary circumstances, and in an ordinary IT department, a C-level manager should not strive to out-expert the experts under their purview. That kind of micromanagement/smartassery will just drive away the experts, and then you need a new CTO and new experts and maybe go bust. Exception to the rule: If you're in a startup where the IT departmend consists of a CTO and one guy remoting in from Bulgaria who runs the servers and is really really cheap, you as the CTO actually should be the most technical person in the room. But once you hire the first actual expert, you should take a step back and get more big-picture-y.
smt88 6y ago
I am the CTO of my company and the "most technical" for sure, but I'm not the "most up to date". I haven't built an JS frontend with Vue, React, and Svelte like one of my team has. Basically I set the team values, priorities, and processes, but I do need a lot of my team to have deeper knowledge of certain things than I do.
kcartlidge 6y ago
> I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most technical. For a decent size company I'd hope the same, but with the proviso that over time any specific industry experience will degrade to a more general understanding, which is fine. And if they don't have the experience they delegate. So bearing in mind the original story, either the CTO should be at least decently technical enough to avoid composing SQL like that commit does, or the CTO should not be committing code in the first place.

yikesshescute 6y ago

> The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two devs that lead daily work Your comment is complete nonsense. With good reasons (personnel, external demands, goals), the working dynamic varies widely from company to company. Presumably, you’ve never worked there and don’t have any clue why they were structured as such. You’re just repeating crap you’ve seen other people write about CTOs. > Not that i like gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes like this one are then blamed on ”foreign agents” and other media bollox. And I’m not defending someone else’s coding mistakes, too busy worrying about my own. > (or use a code analyser) Also, lol, you might as well have said “or use voodoo”.