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I think that his argument is that, as the job of CTO becomes more of a management/connections role, it's better to have someone else in it. I actually agree. T
by michaelochurch 13y ago
I think that his argument is that, as the job of CTO becomes more of a management/connections role, it's better to have someone else in it.
I actually agree. The right people to build a business are often not the right people to maintain it at maturity. I'd want the title of "CTO" if building someone's product, but I would agree to abdicate it if I agreed with the choice of successor, and was genuinely convinced he'd do a better job than I could. I just wouldn't be happy not to have a say in it. I want to be able to say, "if you hire him above me, then I leave and you just had a CTO quit".
Titles make it hard to demote or fire someone because if they punt you, they just "fired their CTO". You want a title because when millions (and potentially billions) are on the line you can't trust people in power, even if you think you've known them for years.
- kyllo 13y agoRight, the key distinction being that in your scenario, the title change is entirely voluntary, and even beneficial from the perspective of the technical co-founder, because he wants to continue working on the codebase rather than having his time taken up by all the politician duties that C*O roles entail. I think in the OP, it seemed like more of a "you shouldn't let your first developer be the CTO because you want to be able to hire someone more experienced above him when your startup gets big enough to attract real rockstar talent" type of angle. Which, as you pointed out, is repulsive.
- patrickmay 13y ago"Repulsive" needs some logical support. If your first developer lacks the necessary skills, it doesn't make sense to put the company at risk by setting him or her up for failure.
- eropple 13y agoHire a better first developer. If you go in to screw the guy working for you (and by my lights, what you describe is screwing), you invite bad karma.