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Then why are you the CTO!! Dude just wants to be a staff engineer

by dbbk 1y ago

Lio 1y ago
Maybe. If he’s a technical founder though what other position would you hold?
- senorrib 1y ago
  Staff engineer. Founders don’t necessarily need to hold CXO titles to work in the startups they founded.
  - SJMG 1y ago
    A few examples that spring to mind, Steve Wozniak and Mitchell Hashimoto
    - doctorleff 1y ago
      I recall James Goodnight of SAS coding while being a CEO. As per https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2014/05/12/an-interview-with-the-godfather-of-data-analytics-sass-jim-goodnight/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2014/05/12/an-intervi..., he still programs from time to time but doesn't have a specific part in development. In looking at the articles to refresh my memory, it is clear he is one of the good CEO's
      - eitally 1y ago
        I don't think that's the model we should be looking at here. I'd add Stephen Wolfram to the very short list of similar technical CEOs.
        obiefernandez 1y ago
        Tobi Luetke at Shopify too
    - tanjtanjtanj 1y ago
      Wasn't Mitchell Hashimoto only a non-CxO for a handful of months between stepping down and selling the company?
      - SJMG 1y ago
        I'm not that familiar with his employment history; you could be right. Either way, he'd still be an example. If you have longer term ones, I'm sure it would add to the discussion
- noleary 1y ago
  It's not that uncommon to keep the "CTO" title and not be the primary manager of the engineering organization. There are all kinds of things you can do with the org chart. If I recall correctly, Clickhouse works this way. The company's cofounders comprise three people [1]: * Aaron, a sales-oriented CEO from Elastic and Salesforce * Alexey, the original Clickhouse developer, as CTO * Yury, an experienced engineering executive from Google/Netflix as "President" An excerpt from the launch announcement [2]: > While negotiations were still ongoing, Katz decided they needed a third co-founder. “I kept thinking, if I could get a third co-founder to run product and engineering, and if I could find someone with the same level of experience building distributed systems on open-source that I have on go-to-market, it could be a really compelling combination,” Katz says. --- --- [1] https://clickhouse.com/company/our-story https://clickhouse.com/company/our-story [2] https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/the-fast-and-the-furious-how-clickhouse-the-worlds-fastest-open-source-database-is-creating-the-first-real-time-data-warehouse/ https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/the-fast-and-the-...
libraryofbabel 1y ago
He mentions he has nobody reporting to him. That sounds like he’s really a staff engineer with a vanity CTO title, plus a lot of sway in strategic decision making. It’s not a guaranteed recipe for disaster, but it depends critically on his relationship with whoever actually manages the engineering org. If they don’t pull in the same direction, things go south very quickly and you end up with a little civil war. Either way it’s a red flag and I wouldn’t work there. Another red flag is that he wrote this blog post at all. Given how clearly negative the reaction to it was going to be, it’s a strong signal he doesn’t really think things through and has a ego wrapped up in his “coding” prowess and ability to circumvent process. People mention Woz as an example of a technical co-founder in a non-management role, but he is a humble guy and wouldn’t brag like this.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
How big is assembled in terms of headcount? That should resolve most of the questions we are raising.
- boulos 1y ago
  LinkedIn suggests "50-200". 54 work in San Francisco, and 154 people are associated with it. So probably closer to 150, but that includes a lot of Sales and Marketing related roles. Maybe the "engineering" org is ~100 or just under that.
rgbrgb 1y ago
FWIW Carmack did this as CTO of Oculus [0]. Another configuration I've seen is for the CTO to have like 1 direct (VP Eng) who does actual eng managing. You could argue it's a staff engineer role but I've never seen staff engineers actually get much say over org direction/structure or be empowered to break gridlock like this. [0]: https://www.uploadvr.com/john-carmacks-app-reviews-series/ https://www.uploadvr.com/john-carmacks-app-reviews-series/

Then why are you the CTO!! Dude just wants to be a staff engineer

by dbbk 1y ago

Then why are you the CTO!! Dude just wants to be a staff engineer

Lio 1y ago

Maybe. If he’s a technical founder though what other position would you hold?

senorrib 1y ago
Staff engineer. Founders don’t necessarily need to hold CXO titles to work in the startups they founded.
- SJMG 1y ago
  A few examples that spring to mind, Steve Wozniak and Mitchell Hashimoto
  - doctorleff 1y ago
    I recall James Goodnight of SAS coding while being a CEO. As per https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2014/05/12/an-interview-with-the-godfather-of-data-analytics-sass-jim-goodnight/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2014/05/12/an-intervi..., he still programs from time to time but doesn't have a specific part in development. In looking at the articles to refresh my memory, it is clear he is one of the good CEO's
    - eitally 1y ago
      I don't think that's the model we should be looking at here. I'd add Stephen Wolfram to the very short list of similar technical CEOs.
      - obiefernandez 1y ago
        Tobi Luetke at Shopify too
  - tanjtanjtanj 1y ago
    Wasn't Mitchell Hashimoto only a non-CxO for a handful of months between stepping down and selling the company?
    - SJMG 1y ago
      I'm not that familiar with his employment history; you could be right. Either way, he'd still be an example. If you have longer term ones, I'm sure it would add to the discussion
noleary 1y ago
It's not that uncommon to keep the "CTO" title and not be the primary manager of the engineering organization. There are all kinds of things you can do with the org chart. If I recall correctly, Clickhouse works this way. The company's cofounders comprise three people [1]: * Aaron, a sales-oriented CEO from Elastic and Salesforce * Alexey, the original Clickhouse developer, as CTO * Yury, an experienced engineering executive from Google/Netflix as "President" An excerpt from the launch announcement [2]: > While negotiations were still ongoing, Katz decided they needed a third co-founder. “I kept thinking, if I could get a third co-founder to run product and engineering, and if I could find someone with the same level of experience building distributed systems on open-source that I have on go-to-market, it could be a really compelling combination,” Katz says. --- --- [1] https://clickhouse.com/company/our-story https://clickhouse.com/company/our-story [2] https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/the-fast-and-the-furious-how-clickhouse-the-worlds-fastest-open-source-database-is-creating-the-first-real-time-data-warehouse/ https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/the-fast-and-the-...

libraryofbabel 1y ago

He mentions he has nobody reporting to him. That sounds like he’s really a staff engineer with a vanity CTO title, plus a lot of sway in strategic decision making. It’s not a guaranteed recipe for disaster, but it depends critically on his relationship with whoever actually manages the engineering org. If they don’t pull in the same direction, things go south very quickly and you end up with a little civil war. Either way it’s a red flag and I wouldn’t work there. Another red flag is that he wrote this blog post at all. Given how clearly negative the reaction to it was going to be, it’s a strong signal he doesn’t really think things through and has a ego wrapped up in his “coding” prowess and ability to circumvent process. People mention Woz as an example of a technical co-founder in a non-management role, but he is a humble guy and wouldn’t brag like this.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

cantor_S_drug 1y ago

How big is assembled in terms of headcount? That should resolve most of the questions we are raising.

boulos 1y ago
LinkedIn suggests "50-200". 54 work in San Francisco, and 154 people are associated with it. So probably closer to 150, but that includes a lot of Sales and Marketing related roles. Maybe the "engineering" org is ~100 or just under that.

rgbrgb 1y ago

FWIW Carmack did this as CTO of Oculus [0]. Another configuration I've seen is for the CTO to have like 1 direct (VP Eng) who does actual eng managing. You could argue it's a staff engineer role but I've never seen staff engineers actually get much say over org direction/structure or be empowered to break gridlock like this. [0]: https://www.uploadvr.com/john-carmacks-app-reviews-series/ https://www.uploadvr.com/john-carmacks-app-reviews-series/