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> I currently manage no direct reports and ship a lot of code. This is a wildly different status than almost all other people with this title. I’m glad this p
by willio58 1y ago
> I currently manage no direct reports and ship a lot of code.
This is a wildly different status than almost all other people with this title.
I’m glad this person still likes coding, and they seem to be great at it, but this role doesn’t match up to the title. This doesn’t really matter until he wants to switch jobs and realizes near zero CTO positions outside of this one company will require few meetings and zero management. He’d have to change title to principal engineer or something but an article titled “Why I code as a Principal Engineer” doesn’t quite grab attention the same way.
- tptacek 1y agoNo it isn't. Lots of CTOs don't have reports.
- orliesaurus 1y agoreally? like who?
- tptacek 1y agoBoth in my own personal direct experience and in 15 years of consulting, primarily for tech startups, the modal CTO I encountered had in reality a product manager role with a special title that was helpful in important pre-sales meetings --- and they did not tend to be the de facto VP/PM.
- aaronblohowiak 1y agowhat's the most effective model you've seen?
- tptacek 1y agoI think CTO as "other, better-defined kind of exec, but with a funny hat" is a perfectly cromulent model. I think CTO as "PM that customers feel flattered to talk to" is another perfectly cromulent model. To me, "CTO" is almost an honorific, or like a title of nobility.
- Cpoll 1y agoI've been at several companies that have a CTO and a Director of Engineering. The CTO sets the strategy, and the Director of Engineering handles the execution. In theory the Director "reports" to the CTO (I.e. is under in the org chart), but not necessarily. Sometimes the Director reports to the CEO, and/or takes a more collaborative role with the CTO.
- tptacek 1y agoThis does not apply at my current company, where the CTO has their title as an artifact of how the founding team was structured, but if I was founder/early at a company, progressed to a senior role, and then was told that I should take a role where I "set engineering strategy", I would immediately conclude that I was being managed out. "Strategy", in particular, is the kiss of death.
- dijit 1y agoI have a terribly hard time understanding the effectiveness of a CTO who has no reports, especially in a technology company.
- tptacek 1y agoWhat is it that you think a CTO does? There isn't a standard answer to this question.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kjgkjhfkjf 1y agoCTO is usually the exec responsible for the entire tech org. The CTO reports to the CEO, and the top managers and maybe a few ICs in the tech org report to the CTO.
- tomnipotent 1y agoIt's very common to see a VP of Engineering managing the day-to-day operations while the CTO acts in a capacity like this.
- dijit 1y agoI’ve seen that too, but then the VP of Engineering tends to report to the CTO, and not to- say, the CEO directly.
- tomnipotent 1y agoDotted line reporting is very different. In these instances the VP/E is usually directly interfacing with other executives as the CTO's peer. This is even more true when the budget is managed by the VP/E and the CTO is more customer/sales facing.
- tptacek 1y ago
- stackedinserter 1y agoCTO without reports is just a "developer".
- cjblomqvist 1y agoIt's definitely not super uncommon where I'm at. CTOs, especially those that founded companies and are more technical doers than managers, that end up having responsibility for architecture and technical matters (tech lead deluxe), but no people (due to lack of people management and leadership skills/or desire for that kind of job - sometimes also product management skills at larger organizations).
- raw_anon_1111 1y agoWith no directs, even “principal” would be a stretch in any company of note. If he spends that much time “coding”, that barely qualifies as a “senior” at large tech companies.
- Thorrez 1y agoThere are plenty of Principal Engineers (L8) at Google who have no reports. In fact, I think the majority have no reports.
- raw_anon_1111 1y agoLet me clarify. I know there are principals with no directs. I’m more calling out that the “scope” of a principal is a high bar at Big Tech and if he is spending all of his time coding at a startup, I doubt that he is working at the level of a principal at BigTech. My own anecdote is that the level of work I was doing as an “architect” at a 60 person startup where I was the second technical hire when the new CTO was hired to bring tech leadership in house from a third party consulting company mapped to a mid level L5 consultant at AWS ProServe (to be fair I only had two and a half years of AWS experience at the time I was hired by AWS) and now while I’m a “Staff consultant” at a third party AWS consulting firm with around 1000 people, looking at the leveling guidelines and expectations at my current company, AWS and GCP, it maps to a “senior”
- BoxFour 1y agoMost of those engineers, outside of ones who have extremely specialized knowledge or skills, are essentially managing others still just without a direct reporting chain. The commit log for most of these high-level engineers is extremely sparse. They're spending most of their time writing documents or influencing orgs, not writing code.
- Thorrez 1y agoYes. I was responding to the sentence "With no directs, even “principal” would be a stretch in any company of note." which talked about direct reports.
- roenxi 1y agoIt seems possible that most CTOs are in tiny startups, don't have reports and we don't know about them because, having no reports, they don't get a lot of visibility compared to someone at the top of a 10,000 person org chart. But the article framing is still odd. If the CTO has no reports who is going to do the coding other than the CTO? The reason the CTO is coding is because, being CTO, they want technical things to happen. He can't farm it off to his reports because they don't exist. Case closed. The real question is why doesn't he feel hiring some people to code is a good idea. 1 highly capable report could probably +30%, 40% his productivity.
- indigodaddy 1y agoSounds more like a "distinguished engineer" ?
- mobeigi 1y agoExactly. Most CTO's have tens if not hundreds of direct reports that rely on them regularly. Which is why their time must be used to support them leaving absolutely 0 time to do PR code contributions on the side (unless you work weekends).
- citizenpaul 1y agoNot much is worse than working somewhere that a higher up is squatting a job title that they don't want to do. It just causes a dysfunctional lord of the flies situation where lower people fight for the reigns to get what they want.