Ask HN: What does it take to be a CTO of a growing startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What does it take to be a CTO of a growing startup?

5 pointsantjanus11 comments

You need to be well-versed, experienced, able to work long hours, leap a tall building in a single bound. Building something that people can contribute to, not a tossed salad. Cool tech does not equal good code. Understand deployment, builds, branches, design, process, security. Be a one man show if needed, but be a real tech leader or else you will end up being the problem. There is more I am sure, but that will take you a long way I believe.

so it implies that every full stack dev is capable of tech cto of start up company , right?

I think a full-stack dev would be a good place to start. Does not make you a leader, but yes it does fill a lot of check-boxes I think.

Leadership, not management. You have to inspire people to work hard, long and sometimes grueling hours to deliver. Which means you must also work those same hours and do what you say too. I have always lived by this rule, I will never ask a team member (employee) to do something I am not willing to do myself. Doesn't mean I would be the best person to do it on the team, but I'll jump in and do my best.

And understand that delivery is all that will matter in the end. Rough edges are expected, perfection is unattainable and shipping is most important. It is ok to demand a lot but pick everyone up along the way, dust them off and push them back into the game and get rid of bad hires quickly (you will have them). This will go a long way towards holding a team together.

You also should be highly competent and technical with ideally a reasonably broad background. People should respect your capabilities, not because you demand it but because you do the job. Remember you are never to good for anything that needs to be done, cause it all has to get done.

> You have to inspire people to work hard, long and sometimes grueling hours to deliver.

You're doing it wrong. If you're having that much trouble with deadlines and bandwidth, you should be inspiring your CEO, board, and investors to solve that problem. You should also make sure that you're providing them with honest estimates and not over-promising what your team can achieve.

Even if they do it willingly, pressing so hard on your team is going to lead to burnout and turnover in the long term, and lower quality deliverables in the medium term. Those almost certainly cost your startup more than a postponed feature or missed deadline.

I don't disagree with most of what you said. But the reality is there will be long grueling hours regardless of the best laid plans. So you have to inspire people to push through that. That doesn't mean you aren't pushing back on deadlines and working smarter, but when you have limited runway you have to push hard. It also doesn't mean you abuse people or not push them to take personal time.

As for inspiring the board and CEO etc. totally agree, but rarely is there a time an early startup CTO can tell investors we need to move slower. The best scenario generally is working to get more resources to reduce individual workloads but you still have to inspire people to work hard which will result in a number of long hours for some. And you can't be the "manager" just telling people to work harder, they have to be inspired by the work and what they are doing.

I also think it is critical to know how to transition your team to a more mature group as you raise further money and gain clients and revenue. Exactly to your point.

I'm not sure if I can agree with that. In my 10 years of development, I encountered only one company whose tech side had to work under such conditions.

Any other time, it was a rarity, maybe like 3-4 days a year in case of emergencies. And this includes CTOs.

1. Previous experience seeing technology projects through their full lifecycle, so that you know what you're facing and can communicate it to others before you get there.

2. Confident and strong rapport with your stakeholders (CEO, board, investors, etc), so that you can get the resources you need and so that you can feel comfortable delivering harsh news when you need to.

3. Leadership and rapport with your team, so that they're contributing as best they can.

4. Humility, so that you know when somebody else should be architecting, coding, hiring, estimating, managing, planning, or doing whatever else your job requires.

How would you go about achieving #3?

A product.

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