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I think you are misunderstanding what a CTO does. CTOs primarily solve people problems, not technical problems. The focus is much more on organizational, marke
by jandrewrogers 4y ago
I think you are misunderstanding what a CTO does.
CTOs primarily solve people problems, not technical problems. The focus is much more on organizational, market, and customer issues in a strategic context. Being technical provides necessary context to do that job competently but the skills required are not primarily technical per se. What you are describing is a technical generalist and Swiss Army knife. Outside of a garage-stage startup, a CTO should not be spending much time deep in the weeds of technical execution.
I think you'll find that you are better off presenting yourself as a very well-rounded specialist, which is highly desirable from an employment perspective, than as a generalist.
- Nomentatus 4y agoI think you've misunderstood the question. He doesn't want a job, he wants a job where he'll get use his special sauce. All managers spend a ton of time on people problems, and onboarding/training. But CTOs do or can do more; their technical judgements are a key part of the job. They don't have to get into the weeds, but they have to know the weeds and know who on their team knows most about which weeds. Elon gets ridiculously far into the weeds, frequently; but admittedly that's rare. Jobs relied more on intuition and key tech people, but knew more about the weeds than he let on. I know, most employers wouldn't hire Elon or Jobs or let them do their thing. But again this guy ain't looking for just any perch. I'm reminded of Sandy Munro roasting/comparing all the executives he worked under at Ford with Musk. It's absolutely true that this guy would be miserable with a standard CTO-type job at the old Ford. He doesn't want our help getting that job.