When is a CTO not a CTO?
Title inflation is real. Many of the individuals in industry with the title "CTO", really are no such thing. Let's dig deeper!
I’ve seen many discussions on LinkedIn and social media lately on whether a CTO should be hands-on. Opinions differ, but mine is pretty clear:
I’m going to set out my stall early: most early-stage startup CTO’s aren’t CTO’s. Most early-stage startups patently do not need a CTO.
If your CTO writes production code, he probably isn’t a CTO. If your CTO directly manages developers, he most likely isn’t a CTO.
What companies at this sort of scale need, and frequently have, are strong Individual Contributors (“IC’s”), with a good feel for product, who can help teams self-organize and select the correct trade-offs to get to market/iterate after market entry.
But giving these individuals premature titles of CTO, Director/VP/Head of Engineering or similar is doing them a great disservice - if their comfort zone and zone of excellence is the intersection of IC, team & product, asking them to do the work of an actual CTO/Director/VP/Head later will at best make them miserable, at worst have them be awful at their job, when they used to be an outstanding IC & team multiplier.
A star IC & CTO are not the same
A real CTO’s job mostly includes responsibilities far away from writing code: it’s turning the CEO’s business strategy into technological strategy. It’s selecting and negotiating with vendors. Budgeting. Figuring out how to structure the engineering organization, and what that means in terms of the lieutenants they need in place to delegate to. It’s a million things miles away from writing code.
It is also about learning to let go and trust people to do what they were hired to do. Many a star IC over-promoted has a hard time letting go of being an IC, being in control and knowing every minute detail of what is going on in their tech stack. It easily spills over into micromanagement, second guessing and directing people instead of giving them a goal to aim for.
This sort of behavior in a CTO role is absolutely toxic: it makes people second guess what the CTO wants, it sucks the air out of the room, and subsequently robs people of both initiative, agency and growth opportunities.
Seniority means guarding your opinions
It’s lonely at the top. Or at least, it sadly should be:
The more senior the formal title and authority, the more weight even throwaway comments carry among staff. Even without intent, subordinates easily fall into guessing games about what the CTO wants, if they seemed to express an opinion on something. It’s easy for people to fall into seeking approval of a the CTO rather than doing what’s right for their business area.
In practice, this means someone with a senior management title often needs to be well-guarded in expressing opinions publicly in areas which are not their direct purview. It’s better to say nothing, than to send a team into tail-chasing mode because you expressed a preference for one architectural style, technology or vendor over another.
Let’s be honest: being this level of guarded does not come naturally to many people at all. Especially not those who have been on a career-path to seniority. But some excel at it naturally, others learn it the hard way. Yet others never learn, and as a consequence, unwittingly struggle with the issues that it produces.
Early-stage startups and small businesses don’t need a CTO!
I implied early on that most CTO’s of early-stage startups and small companies aren’t CTO’s.
If we take a step back, it’s really no criticism of the individuals who still hold the title. It’s just that what early-stage and small businesses need aren’t a CTO. Arguably, they don’t need Directors, VPs etc. either, they barely need Engineering Managers.
But because CxO titles are cool, and most feel someone needs it, they are handed out like candies anyway, when what is needed is actually something entirely different.
An early-stage startup CTO probably more does the equivalent job of what in a bigger company a Principal- or Staff Engineer does, with explicit final say in technical decisions.
All the inflated title achieves is future prestige & political issues, as demoting someone unsuited to the role is both more frequent, and more infected, than simply not having the title to begin with and hiring for it later as growth requires it.
Occasionally, a company might get lucky, and their designated CTO is actually an appropriate pick and grows with the role. But I’d venture a guess that it is far more common that star Individual Contributors get over-promoted based on showing excellence in areas entirely unrelated to what is required of a CTO. In a way, it’s a tragedy in its own right: you are robbing an individual of the thing they excel at (and often fulfils them), and hanging them out to dry, doing work they are potentially not suited to. They may even cling on to the work of their old role, holding a senior title, but actually doing none of the work it entails.
Take-away: resist title-inflation
Let’s be honest: a 3-5 man company does not need to have 3-5 CxO’s. One is plenty, often to a considerably larger size.
Call roles what they are, and hire for what they are. If the role entails primarily engineering work, the person is an engineer, end of story.
Excessive title inflation will only cause problems of hurt egos as a company grows and people are painted into corners because of the titles they were given prematurely.
Avoiding title inflation is in everyone’s best interest: the company, and the individuals who would be saddled with inflated titles.