What does a CTO actually do?
vadimkravcenko.com
vadimkravcenko.com
And they both report to the CEO - if your VP of Eng. is reporting to the CTO that's a really bad thing.
> I have a rule of thumb — the smaller the company, the less CTO has to deal with people, and the bigger the company, the less CTO has to do with technology. At some points on this spectrum — it’s either full coding or full strategy.
This is just totally wrong. It's completely backwards. In a small company, the CTO is dealing with people and technology direction, because they are probably also doing VP of Eng. roles, unfortunately. This will not be good but may need to happen until someone else can step in. In a large company, the CTO should only be focused on tech, and should not be managing many people at all. That's the VP of Eng. job.
The CTO could be the top of the IT org, and have nothing to do with research. There could be a Chief Scientist.
These roles are defined by the executive team as they are working. They are the only ones that can define them beyond a bunch of gross generalizations.
The VP of Eng is very important to take as many management efforts from the CTO as possible. Similar to how the CFO takes from the CEO.
CTO literally means anything and nothing within companies. Here are a few common ones in my opinion:
- Head technology/engineering person responsible for hiring, managing budget and deciding technology.
- Head technology explainer to c-suite, board and customers. Think of them as a technical sales executive.
- Place to stash a technical founder who’s stepped down from a CEO role and is not engaged. SVP of Engineering handles all day-to-day work.
- Highly engaged technical founder working on passion or “emerging” projects.
- Highly engaged technical founder providing day-to-day strategy only.