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Comment by simmschi | Hacker News Reader

In my experience the CEO - COO relationship is similar to that between a CTO and a VP Engineering.

If you are the CTO and have a VPE, the VP typically tends to focus inwards, while the CTO has the luxury to care more about outwards topics - strategy, vision, investor relations, business relations etc. The VP focuses on processes, projects, coding standards etc.

It's similar between CEO and COO. If you have a COO you trust, as a CEO you can focus much more outwards about high level issues (strategy, investors, business partners etc). The COO makes sure that the business runs smoothly (hiring, processes, quality of service etc).

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I work in C suite for non tech/start up industry, more traditional setting, and could not have explained better than this.

It’s mostly a bifurcation of strategy and execution. The CEO is forward looking and COO is focused on the day to day. Making sure all teams and processes are running smoothly. Helping determine which investments have a high priority, etc. The COO is still very involved in the strategy as well. Because they’ll eventually need to operationalize it.

Pretty much every C level role that gets added as a company grows is to pull away some domain specific stuff from the CEO. The CEO could do it all in theory. COO is usually one of the later additions to the C suite during growth as it usually has a lot of overlap with CEO.

> while the CTO has the luxury to care more about outwards topics - strategy, vision, investor relations, business relations etc.

Odd, those are all CEO responsibilities, not CTO ones.

Yeah sorry, I meant this of course in the context of a tech organization.

As a CTO you will spend time preparing board meetings, OKR discussions, be part of strategy offsites, handle audits, have stakeholder meetings (CPO, COO, HR), have a part in Allhands, talk to vendors and business partners and of course handle all internal crisises that are escalated to you.

It's definitely a more messy and political work environment that you should take into account when leaving the IC track.

Not in the realm of technology. I.e. what is our strategic technical vision, what do I have to prepare for investors to explain our technical strategy, etc.

The inward focus aspect is a good way to look at it. Most of these titles date back to the manufacturing days, when the COO was the guy responsible for production, for running the factories (all of the plant managers reported up to him). The CEO had a much broader purview (not only production, but also sales, finance, etc) and perhaps more importantly being the external face of the company to the market and to shareholders.

Some people would say that the VPE has the luxury to care more about inwards topics whilst the CTO tends to focus outwards.

Different strokes for different folks.

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