
Ask HN: What distinguishes good from great CTOs? - ows
Currently interested in understanding what are the main differentiators mostly only experience grants CTOs or tech leaders in general
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davismwfl
The primary one IMO is patience. Patience technically and with people. A good
majority of the CTO job beyond startups is blending the business and
technology and speaking/working with people who have little technical chops.

One of the worst traits I see is knee jerk reactions and that extends beyond
just a CTO leadership, but it can be horribly debilitating to an engineering
team if the CTO isn't calm, focused and deliberate. This is true in small
startups and large enterprises.

I also believe great CTO's stay current with technology, this of course is a
burden and hard to do as the organization grows large. And in this way I think
it is harder to be a great CTO than to be a good CEO, simply because change is
so rapid and dynamic in technology compared to say accounting. Accounting does
have changes and updates but it is not at the pace of technology.

I personally think having a wide experience across diverse products, projects
and industries also helps a CTO be effective. As companies grow a lot of times
it isn't custom development so much as integration of large scale systems
which run a business that a CTO has to be effective at getting integrated. The
challenge there is rarely one of technology but one of negotiations with other
executives and getting stakeholder by in. For the longest time CTO's have been
stuck at the kids table when it comes to the C suite in larger organizations,
this is starting to change for the better but it is still true in most large
enterprises. So a great CTO has to develop superior people skills to be
effective, IMO.

