5 ms·

Agree, also his example of the CTO was "Dropbox". Dropbox is/was basically only a "folder that syncs reliably". For that role, this is deeply technical low-leve

Agree, also his example of the CTO was "Dropbox". Dropbox is/was basically only a "folder that syncs reliably". For that role, this is deeply technical low-level work and yeah, that CTO probably should be very technical. The CTO (once the team is >10 or so) really only needs to be "as technical as needed to make smart decisions". This will vary a lot by company.

ForHackernews 4y ago
Dropbox also completely lost the market they invented to Box, largely because of nontechnical considerations.
- scarface74 4y ago
  As Steve Jobs said, DropBox was always going to end up being a feature not a product. For the same price you pay for DropBox, you can get the complete Office 365 with 5 TB of storage for five people or GSuite with storage.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    Imo that quote only ever made sense when you add "[compared to apple]" which was likely how he meant it. Also have you tried actually using gsuite storage?
    - scarface74 4y ago
      I think it makes more sense when it comes to Microsoft Office365. I wouldn’t use Google anything for something I depend on.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Dropbox has about twice the revenue of Box. Box was founded a couple of years before Dropbox. However, both only have a small share of the value of consumer and commercial cloud storage at this point.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    When i talked to dropbox folks like 5 years ago they scoffed at box only being a third of their revenue. Sounds like they’re closing the gap
daveslash 4y ago
Yes. This. I agree with you and the parent comment. I was "CTO" of my very small startup with < 10 people and 3 total engineers. I was extremely technical and hands-on in that role. I've worked at a mid-sized business that didn't even have a CTO, despite having 4 FTE software engineers and a network infrastructure team. I now work for a globally distributed Fortune 500 company with nearly 100,000 employees working on hundreds of technical projects using all sorts of tech stacks and code from Embedded C to serverless SaaS offerings. The notion that my CTO should be able to "jump into the code, start grabbing JIRA tickets on a moment's notice, or throw together a new feature when a deadline is looming" is absurd. It might be nice to have a CTO that's been in that role at some point, but no way should I expect them to be able to tomorrow.

ForHackernews 4y ago

Dropbox also completely lost the market they invented to Box, largely because of nontechnical considerations.

scarface74 4y ago
As Steve Jobs said, DropBox was always going to end up being a feature not a product. For the same price you pay for DropBox, you can get the complete Office 365 with 5 TB of storage for five people or GSuite with storage.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Imo that quote only ever made sense when you add "[compared to apple]" which was likely how he meant it. Also have you tried actually using gsuite storage?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I think it makes more sense when it comes to Microsoft Office365. I wouldn’t use Google anything for something I depend on.
1123581321 4y ago
Dropbox has about twice the revenue of Box. Box was founded a couple of years before Dropbox. However, both only have a small share of the value of consumer and commercial cloud storage at this point.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  When i talked to dropbox folks like 5 years ago they scoffed at box only being a third of their revenue. Sounds like they’re closing the gap

daveslash 4y ago

Yes. This. I agree with you and the parent comment. I was "CTO" of my very small startup with < 10 people and 3 total engineers. I was extremely technical and hands-on in that role. I've worked at a mid-sized business that didn't even have a CTO, despite having 4 FTE software engineers and a network infrastructure team. I now work for a globally distributed Fortune 500 company with nearly 100,000 employees working on hundreds of technical projects using all sorts of tech stacks and code from Embedded C to serverless SaaS offerings. The notion that my CTO should be able to "jump into the code, start grabbing JIRA tickets on a moment's notice, or throw together a new feature when a deadline is looming" is absurd. It might be nice to have a CTO that's been in that role at some point, but no way should I expect them to be able to tomorrow.