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I read all the time about folks who become a VP/CTO and stop coding. Management skills are not coding skills. I know it. But I can't for the life of me figure o

by film42 2y ago

I read all the time about folks who become a VP/CTO and stop coding. Management skills are not coding skills. I know it. But I can't for the life of me figure out why folks hang up their keyboards and let their first super power go to waste. You can be a technical CTO from start to finish. Treat your team and the company like a service that needs active contribution, maintenance, and on-call support; and also, get your hands dirty building by yourself and with your team.

mikeshi42 2y ago
I don't think there's a right answer here, but there's definitely a point where your code contributions are much lower leverage than for example trying to recruit the next set of critical engineers, working on the technical roadmap to keep ahead of the competition, or making sure the engineering org is aligned with the rest of the company. Any lines of code the VP/CTO could write, could likely be written by someone else on their team (and their team's quality could be even better) - but all the other items I listed is likely only something the VP/CTO could do the best at in the company. It's quite a rational decision to largely give up hands-on technical work for what's more important for your team and company.
- guappa 2y ago
  Can you really do any of that if you forgot how it's done?
CaffeineLD50 2y ago
Elon Musk, for example, appears to be wholly self taught as a coder. Do you want Elon doing your code reviews?
- guappa 2y ago
  I want him to call me a pedo while I'm trying to save people stuck in a cave :D
  - CaffeineLD50 2y ago
    Lol. Nice one.
ajmurmann 2y ago
In my own experience it's a matter of only having that much time in the day. For 7 years I had somewhere between 20-25 people I was directly or indirectly responsible for. There was just not enough time to get anything useful done in the code and my time was much better spent solving problems that others couldn't. A few times I was able to pick up some really simple change just to get the experience first hand to go through all our processes and see where we can do better. I always kept coding nights and weekends but it's just not the same and over time you are gonna get a little rusty. That said I greatly enjoyed getting my hand dirty all day during a sabbatical I'm taking.
jayd16 2y ago
When you're not just an IC, you have other priorities. That means your IC work can be derailed at any moment. _That_ means you can't take on work anywhere near the critical path or you're just blocking others or handing things off. Reviews? Sure. Design meetings? Sure. But taking critical work will end up causing issues.
petesergeant 2y ago
> You can be a technical CTO from start to finish My last CTO role (team of 40) had me absolutely over capacity from day one, and I am _good_ at time management. I would rather have been programming 50% of the time, but there just was no time, and no support structure in place I could hand stuff off to; I had to painstakingly build that, which was yet another reason I had no time. I like the idea of continuing to code, but usually that’s not what you’re being paid for, and while I consider myself a very strong developer, they can be purchased for less than the CTO’s salary, rather than the more expensive CTO doing the work. FWIW I went back to IC after a few years and plan to stay that way for the rest of my career.
- yard2010 2y ago
  I would love to know how and why you made that decision and how it's going for you (good I bet), can you please elaborate?
  - petesergeant 2y ago
    If “that decision” you mean going back to IC, it’s going well I think? I work remotely from outside the US, get a decent salary, and have a lot less stress than I used to! I’m currently working on AI projects I find really interesting and I’m getting a decent US developer salary in a tax-free company. Plan to retire in 15 years.
- maayank 2y ago
  What were good time management resources for you?
  - petesergeant 2y ago
    Getting Things Done and Seven Habits set the foundation, and then just iterating on those principles until I found systems that worked for me. Big believer in not using the Inbox as a task list, and apps that make setting, repeating, and organising reminders very easy.
gorgoiler 2y ago
For me, the hacker super power — the one worth carrying forward as you progress in leadership — is being able to prototype something that works and proves a concept. Realistically, a proof of concept is also only 20% of the work an engineer needs to do in order for a change to become production worthy and I respect that my sketched ideas need a lot more care and craftsmanship than I have time to give them. Where I can help other ICs is having that initial 20% idea around which they can then build a working idea, and do so autonomously. It feels very cringey to write — oh brave new world that has such people as me in it! — but I can easily reassure myself by remembering all the times earlier in my career where I was very grateful to be initially pointed, with quite a lot of prompting, in a particular direction and then being given the chance to deliver on it. I’m just a lead, but I can imagine part of being a CTO takes the same form as what I’ve described.
whilenot-dev 2y ago
I've also had the experience where the CTO was activly coding, 80% of the code base were theirs, and the company was hiring software engineers who could and wanted to fix up their stuff - there was this true luxury problem for this start-up: bad bugs everywhere, but patient and resilient customers. They found 4 willing engineers with good chemistry at first, at least up until they were constantly vetoed by the CTO in their decisions, because the teams best practices conflicted with the CTO-way of "getting things done" - it's a rigid hierachy after all, and not a democracy.
scarface_74 2y ago
The job of a CTO is strategy. The last thing you want is a manager that codes. They always end up either being shitty managers who don’t do the things that I need from a manager - making sure the team gets the resources we need, prioritization, big picture, etc - or they end up being shitty developers because they can’t keep their commitments because of management responsibilities. Development is not a “super power”. Developers are a dime a dozen and if you look at the leveling guidelines of every well known tech company, how well you code only makes a difference up to the mid level. Knowing what to develop, knowing how to deal with business, how to lead an implementation, managing trade offs, “dealing with ambiguity”, etc is the differentiator.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > The job of a CTO is strategy. The last thing you want is a manager that codes. For a large company the size of Google? Yes. For a startup? No.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    For even a 20-30 person company. My CTO at the last startup I was working for was constantly flying to talk to customers - B2B with long sales cycles. He was the first technical person that the CxOs at the other companies spoke to. I find it quite funny when startups reach out to me about a “CTO” position that is really just a glorified team lead where I would be doing more hands on work and less strategy (with lower pay) than I was doing as a mid level (L5) employee when I was working at AWS (Professional Services). I’ve interviewed former “CTOs” at startups that never did handle the scope of work, budgets and strategy that we expect from our “staff” level employees (my level now) at the medium size company I work at.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > For even a 20-30 person company. My CTO at the last startup I was working for was constantly flying to talk to customers - B2B with long sales cycles. He was the first technical person that the CxOs at the other companies spoke to. That's really not a job for the CTO. It's a job for a sales engineer (with whatever their CxO title is), and it requires a different skill set. You need to be able to extract the product requirements from the customer, and to distill them for other teams. You don't necessarily need to be able to guide their implementation. > I find it quite funny when startups reach out to me about a “CTO” position that is really just a glorified team lead But that's exactly what a CTO position is! Their job is to lead the technical teams, on the company level. And a good CTO will know how to scale up. When you're working at a 10-people startup, you'll need to get into the details of the code on the actual "team lead" scale. Once you grow into a larger company, the job becomes a bit more abstract. I worked at L6/L7 positions in AWS, and it indeed is a much more relaxed place if you want it to be. Being a CTO in a startup is way more stressful.
nedt 2y ago
Every junior has mentors and leaders that help them and that they can follow. As you grow you might become one of them. That's the reason why you then let others do all of the coding. It's not like you unlearn everything, but you let your team grow and become you in the end. It can be really satisfying. If you can't stop getting your hands dirty then maybe it's not for you (yet).
osigurdson 2y ago
Also, many start-ups seem to do fine without formal management structure up to 50 or more employees. The CEO / CTO is still coding, talking to customers, hiring, and making the product better. Getting "all managery" in early stages seems like a huge misstep to me. The skills needed to successfully create a start-up are far more rare than those needed to be a good manager.
- dowager_dan99 2y ago
  I really dislike almost everything Oracle and Larry Ellison, but he had an early-days adage "There are 2 jobs at Oracle: you're either building software or selling it". At a early-stage startup most people should be doing both.
  - osigurdson 2y ago
    Yes, totally agree. Don't hire people to work on "corporate culture" until you have money to burn.
Aurornis 2y ago
At VP/CTO level you don’t have time to contribute and maintain code. If you do, the VP or CTO title is probably symbolic, like when someone is a “CTO” in a team of 3 at a startup. The real problem is when people take early career roles that leave no time to code: They take architect roles where they just draw boxes on whiteboards and hop from meeting to meeting, or they accept a role labeled “tech lead” that is actually management in disguise. They get comfortable not writing code and years pass until one day they need a new job. Now they have to interview for coding roles while confronting the fact that they spent a good portion of their programming career not writing any code. It doesn’t come back fast for many.
- upcoming-sesame 2y ago
  I tend to agree but also think AI is changing this narrative. Now some of the coding can be done by LLM and the "architect" skills are more important
  - dowager_dan99 2y ago
    This is how auto executives designed the Pontiac Aztek. How can you possibly become or develop new "architects" with this approach?
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Why would I have to interview for coding roles? I was an active developer from 1996 - 2018. Between 2016 - mid 2020 I started transitioning to team lead/architect roles with some coding until I did a pivot to cloud consulting specializing in app dev. First it was 50/50 coding/strategy until now where it is 10/90 coding/strategy talking to customers and leading teams. I can tell you it was a lot easier finding full time jobs both in 2023 and 2024 as a “staff architect” at both product companies and consulting companies than regular old “senior” [1] enterprise software development jobs. Especially working remotely. Every job posted for generic developers gets hundreds of applications and most of the applicants are probably good enough to do the job. I applied for hundreds of jobs between both times I was looking and heard crickets. They were plan B jobs that actually paid less. On the other hand, in 2023 I had three offers for team lead/architect jobs in three weeks and one offer in 2024 based on replying to one internal recruiter that reached out to me. Besides, I keep between 9-12 months of expenses in a liquid savings account outside of retirement savings. That gives me plenty of runway to prep for coding interviews if I had to. [1] “Senior” roles at most non tech companies mean “you codez real gud” not that you operate at any different level of “scope”, “impact” or “ambiguity” than a mid level developer.
dowager_dan99 2y ago
I'm a first-time Director at a SW company with a total org under me of ~30 people in 5 different subject areas. I struggle with what you highlight, but it's impossible for me to go deep in all these areas. MY boss is the CTO and he talks about "T-shaped" or broadly across and narrowly deep. I really don't like this, but the reality is I view myself as senior-dev level in one area, int in another, junior in 2, and barely familiar with the third - and I'm by far the most technical of all the Director/VPs
jkingsbery 2y ago
Mostly because of the Maker's Schedule vs. Manager's Schedule (https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html) issue. It's really hard to be in a role that deals with a lot of randomization and then sit and focus for 4 hours straight on something.
- rhubarbtree 2y ago
  It’s hard but not impossible. First thing is to realise you’re going to work longer hours than everyone else.

by film42 2y ago

mikeshi42 2y ago

I don't think there's a right answer here, but there's definitely a point where your code contributions are much lower leverage than for example trying to recruit the next set of critical engineers, working on the technical roadmap to keep ahead of the competition, or making sure the engineering org is aligned with the rest of the company. Any lines of code the VP/CTO could write, could likely be written by someone else on their team (and their team's quality could be even better) - but all the other items I listed is likely only something the VP/CTO could do the best at in the company. It's quite a rational decision to largely give up hands-on technical work for what's more important for your team and company.

guappa 2y ago
Can you really do any of that if you forgot how it's done?

CaffeineLD50 2y ago

Elon Musk, for example, appears to be wholly self taught as a coder. Do you want Elon doing your code reviews?

guappa 2y ago
I want him to call me a pedo while I'm trying to save people stuck in a cave :D
- CaffeineLD50 2y ago
  Lol. Nice one.

ajmurmann 2y ago

In my own experience it's a matter of only having that much time in the day. For 7 years I had somewhere between 20-25 people I was directly or indirectly responsible for. There was just not enough time to get anything useful done in the code and my time was much better spent solving problems that others couldn't. A few times I was able to pick up some really simple change just to get the experience first hand to go through all our processes and see where we can do better. I always kept coding nights and weekends but it's just not the same and over time you are gonna get a little rusty. That said I greatly enjoyed getting my hand dirty all day during a sabbatical I'm taking.

jayd16 2y ago

When you're not just an IC, you have other priorities. That means your IC work can be derailed at any moment. _That_ means you can't take on work anywhere near the critical path or you're just blocking others or handing things off. Reviews? Sure. Design meetings? Sure. But taking critical work will end up causing issues.

petesergeant 2y ago

> You can be a technical CTO from start to finish My last CTO role (team of 40) had me absolutely over capacity from day one, and I am _good_ at time management. I would rather have been programming 50% of the time, but there just was no time, and no support structure in place I could hand stuff off to; I had to painstakingly build that, which was yet another reason I had no time. I like the idea of continuing to code, but usually that’s not what you’re being paid for, and while I consider myself a very strong developer, they can be purchased for less than the CTO’s salary, rather than the more expensive CTO doing the work. FWIW I went back to IC after a few years and plan to stay that way for the rest of my career.

yard2010 2y ago
I would love to know how and why you made that decision and how it's going for you (good I bet), can you please elaborate?
- petesergeant 2y ago
  If “that decision” you mean going back to IC, it’s going well I think? I work remotely from outside the US, get a decent salary, and have a lot less stress than I used to! I’m currently working on AI projects I find really interesting and I’m getting a decent US developer salary in a tax-free company. Plan to retire in 15 years.
maayank 2y ago
What were good time management resources for you?
- petesergeant 2y ago
  Getting Things Done and Seven Habits set the foundation, and then just iterating on those principles until I found systems that worked for me. Big believer in not using the Inbox as a task list, and apps that make setting, repeating, and organising reminders very easy.

gorgoiler 2y ago

For me, the hacker super power — the one worth carrying forward as you progress in leadership — is being able to prototype something that works and proves a concept. Realistically, a proof of concept is also only 20% of the work an engineer needs to do in order for a change to become production worthy and I respect that my sketched ideas need a lot more care and craftsmanship than I have time to give them. Where I can help other ICs is having that initial 20% idea around which they can then build a working idea, and do so autonomously. It feels very cringey to write — oh brave new world that has such people as me in it! — but I can easily reassure myself by remembering all the times earlier in my career where I was very grateful to be initially pointed, with quite a lot of prompting, in a particular direction and then being given the chance to deliver on it. I’m just a lead, but I can imagine part of being a CTO takes the same form as what I’ve described.

whilenot-dev 2y ago

I've also had the experience where the CTO was activly coding, 80% of the code base were theirs, and the company was hiring software engineers who could and wanted to fix up their stuff - there was this true luxury problem for this start-up: bad bugs everywhere, but patient and resilient customers. They found 4 willing engineers with good chemistry at first, at least up until they were constantly vetoed by the CTO in their decisions, because the teams best practices conflicted with the CTO-way of "getting things done" - it's a rigid hierachy after all, and not a democracy.

scarface_74 2y ago

The job of a CTO is strategy. The last thing you want is a manager that codes. They always end up either being shitty managers who don’t do the things that I need from a manager - making sure the team gets the resources we need, prioritization, big picture, etc - or they end up being shitty developers because they can’t keep their commitments because of management responsibilities. Development is not a “super power”. Developers are a dime a dozen and if you look at the leveling guidelines of every well known tech company, how well you code only makes a difference up to the mid level. Knowing what to develop, knowing how to deal with business, how to lead an implementation, managing trade offs, “dealing with ambiguity”, etc is the differentiator.

cyberax 2y ago
> The job of a CTO is strategy. The last thing you want is a manager that codes. For a large company the size of Google? Yes. For a startup? No.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  For even a 20-30 person company. My CTO at the last startup I was working for was constantly flying to talk to customers - B2B with long sales cycles. He was the first technical person that the CxOs at the other companies spoke to. I find it quite funny when startups reach out to me about a “CTO” position that is really just a glorified team lead where I would be doing more hands on work and less strategy (with lower pay) than I was doing as a mid level (L5) employee when I was working at AWS (Professional Services). I’ve interviewed former “CTOs” at startups that never did handle the scope of work, budgets and strategy that we expect from our “staff” level employees (my level now) at the medium size company I work at.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > For even a 20-30 person company. My CTO at the last startup I was working for was constantly flying to talk to customers - B2B with long sales cycles. He was the first technical person that the CxOs at the other companies spoke to. That's really not a job for the CTO. It's a job for a sales engineer (with whatever their CxO title is), and it requires a different skill set. You need to be able to extract the product requirements from the customer, and to distill them for other teams. You don't necessarily need to be able to guide their implementation. > I find it quite funny when startups reach out to me about a “CTO” position that is really just a glorified team lead But that's exactly what a CTO position is! Their job is to lead the technical teams, on the company level. And a good CTO will know how to scale up. When you're working at a 10-people startup, you'll need to get into the details of the code on the actual "team lead" scale. Once you grow into a larger company, the job becomes a bit more abstract. I worked at L6/L7 positions in AWS, and it indeed is a much more relaxed place if you want it to be. Being a CTO in a startup is way more stressful.

nedt 2y ago

Every junior has mentors and leaders that help them and that they can follow. As you grow you might become one of them. That's the reason why you then let others do all of the coding. It's not like you unlearn everything, but you let your team grow and become you in the end. It can be really satisfying. If you can't stop getting your hands dirty then maybe it's not for you (yet).

osigurdson 2y ago

Also, many start-ups seem to do fine without formal management structure up to 50 or more employees. The CEO / CTO is still coding, talking to customers, hiring, and making the product better. Getting "all managery" in early stages seems like a huge misstep to me. The skills needed to successfully create a start-up are far more rare than those needed to be a good manager.

dowager_dan99 2y ago
I really dislike almost everything Oracle and Larry Ellison, but he had an early-days adage "There are 2 jobs at Oracle: you're either building software or selling it". At a early-stage startup most people should be doing both.
- osigurdson 2y ago
  Yes, totally agree. Don't hire people to work on "corporate culture" until you have money to burn.

Aurornis 2y ago

At VP/CTO level you don’t have time to contribute and maintain code. If you do, the VP or CTO title is probably symbolic, like when someone is a “CTO” in a team of 3 at a startup. The real problem is when people take early career roles that leave no time to code: They take architect roles where they just draw boxes on whiteboards and hop from meeting to meeting, or they accept a role labeled “tech lead” that is actually management in disguise. They get comfortable not writing code and years pass until one day they need a new job. Now they have to interview for coding roles while confronting the fact that they spent a good portion of their programming career not writing any code. It doesn’t come back fast for many.

upcoming-sesame 2y ago
I tend to agree but also think AI is changing this narrative. Now some of the coding can be done by LLM and the "architect" skills are more important
- dowager_dan99 2y ago
  This is how auto executives designed the Pontiac Aztek. How can you possibly become or develop new "architects" with this approach?
scarface_74 2y ago
Why would I have to interview for coding roles? I was an active developer from 1996 - 2018. Between 2016 - mid 2020 I started transitioning to team lead/architect roles with some coding until I did a pivot to cloud consulting specializing in app dev. First it was 50/50 coding/strategy until now where it is 10/90 coding/strategy talking to customers and leading teams. I can tell you it was a lot easier finding full time jobs both in 2023 and 2024 as a “staff architect” at both product companies and consulting companies than regular old “senior” [1] enterprise software development jobs. Especially working remotely. Every job posted for generic developers gets hundreds of applications and most of the applicants are probably good enough to do the job. I applied for hundreds of jobs between both times I was looking and heard crickets. They were plan B jobs that actually paid less. On the other hand, in 2023 I had three offers for team lead/architect jobs in three weeks and one offer in 2024 based on replying to one internal recruiter that reached out to me. Besides, I keep between 9-12 months of expenses in a liquid savings account outside of retirement savings. That gives me plenty of runway to prep for coding interviews if I had to. [1] “Senior” roles at most non tech companies mean “you codez real gud” not that you operate at any different level of “scope”, “impact” or “ambiguity” than a mid level developer.

dowager_dan99 2y ago

I'm a first-time Director at a SW company with a total org under me of ~30 people in 5 different subject areas. I struggle with what you highlight, but it's impossible for me to go deep in all these areas. MY boss is the CTO and he talks about "T-shaped" or broadly across and narrowly deep. I really don't like this, but the reality is I view myself as senior-dev level in one area, int in another, junior in 2, and barely familiar with the third - and I'm by far the most technical of all the Director/VPs

jkingsbery 2y ago

Mostly because of the Maker's Schedule vs. Manager's Schedule (https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html) issue. It's really hard to be in a role that deals with a lot of randomization and then sit and focus for 4 hours straight on something.

rhubarbtree 2y ago
It’s hard but not impossible. First thing is to realise you’re going to work longer hours than everyone else.