4 ms·

There's a point when "technical enough" comes back into the picture. A gigantic company with 50k employees the CTO is barely relevant to any real tech decisions

There's a point when "technical enough" comes back into the picture. A gigantic company with 50k employees the CTO is barely relevant to any real tech decisions. They are tangentially related but not "in-the-weeds" technical Contrast that to a tech startup, or any startup I suppose. Those CTO's absolutely need to be "in-the-weeds" capable.

spoonjim 4y ago
I think it still matters because of hiring. The type of people rewarded with promotion at the top tend to promote those people and so on down the levels. A nontechnical CTO will start promoting nontechnical people managers and eventually you will have an org run by MBAs.
- dovholuknf 4y ago
  Yes for sure. But those non-technical, big company CTOs are going to be hiring people who need to be good at hiring people. Those are going to be your VPs of engineering types. THOSE people will be 'more technical' at that point. Those VPs of engineering are going to hire directors and so on down the chain. As you descend - it matters more and more that they are good technically. So if you're at a 50k size company, the CTO is so far from anything important that they operate at 'mba level with some technical acumen'. The smaller the company, the more important the role becomes. Even at the company I worked at with 5000 people - the CTO was still nothing more than a glorified 'decider'. The company with 250 people - the CTO was far more necessary to be technical
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    I'd argue that the VPs, all the way up to the CTO need to almost as technical as the lower levels. Otherwise how are they supposed to accurately evaluate who to hire, and their performance once hired. They can go on end result metrics, but those are subject to confounding variables, and are not really accurate enough to make good decision on. It's really hard to tell the geniuses from the bullshitters if you're not able to get down into the details with them on occasion as needed.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    I mean it depends on what kind of company it is. If software development is the company's core activity I think that this kind of setup is likely to fail slowly.

spoonjim 4y ago

I think it still matters because of hiring. The type of people rewarded with promotion at the top tend to promote those people and so on down the levels. A nontechnical CTO will start promoting nontechnical people managers and eventually you will have an org run by MBAs.

dovholuknf 4y ago
Yes for sure. But those non-technical, big company CTOs are going to be hiring people who need to be good at hiring people. Those are going to be your VPs of engineering types. THOSE people will be 'more technical' at that point. Those VPs of engineering are going to hire directors and so on down the chain. As you descend - it matters more and more that they are good technically. So if you're at a 50k size company, the CTO is so far from anything important that they operate at 'mba level with some technical acumen'. The smaller the company, the more important the role becomes. Even at the company I worked at with 5000 people - the CTO was still nothing more than a glorified 'decider'. The company with 250 people - the CTO was far more necessary to be technical
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I'd argue that the VPs, all the way up to the CTO need to almost as technical as the lower levels. Otherwise how are they supposed to accurately evaluate who to hire, and their performance once hired. They can go on end result metrics, but those are subject to confounding variables, and are not really accurate enough to make good decision on. It's really hard to tell the geniuses from the bullshitters if you're not able to get down into the details with them on occasion as needed.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  I mean it depends on what kind of company it is. If software development is the company's core activity I think that this kind of setup is likely to fail slowly.