

Thoughts on the role of a CTO and growing a startup - bhb
http://devver.net/blog/2008/11/notes-from-the-boulder-cto-lunch-1132008/

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tptacek
Three titles: VP/Eng, CTO, and Chief Architect. Each one you have on your
team, I predict your dev cycle is 5 months longer. If you have a CTO, VP/Eng,
_and_ a "Chief Architect", then before your Junior Director of User Interface
Quality Engineering has laid down his first line of JSP templating code,
you're looking down the barrel of 15 months of overhead.

The role of a CTO is to have a cool title in sales and partnership meetings.
Make your CTO your very best sales engineer.

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swombat
The only thing I'd add to this article is that in the earliest stages of the
company (where there's just a handful of people), the CTO is also the VP of
Engineering and also the programming lead.

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wastedbrains
True at our company of two both the CEO and CTO are the programmers. CEO does
a little more with the business side of the world. CTO spends a little more
time on architecture. I assume the roles will become a little different and
more defined as the company grows

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aneesh
There was an article on here a while back with a great description of the CTO
role:

"The CTO's primary job is to make sure the company's technology strategy
serves its business strategy"

