> You can be a technical CTO from start to finish

My last CTO role (team of 40) had me absolutely over capacity from day one, and I am _good_ at time management. I would rather have been programming 50% of the time, but there just was no time, and no support structure in place I could hand stuff off to; I had to painstakingly build that, which was yet another reason I had no time.

I like the idea of continuing to code, but usually that’s not what you’re being paid for, and while I consider myself a very strong developer, they can be purchased for less than the CTO’s salary, rather than the more expensive CTO doing the work. FWIW I went back to IC after a few years and plan to stay that way for the rest of my career.