Links #50

Richard Hansen
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

The Five Flavors of Being CTO:

Summary:

External

  • Evangelist: you’re the key spokesperson in promoting a technology vision to the world. You speak at conferences, talk to press, and have myriad social media followers. If your company has an Open Source community, you’re the leader; same story if your company participates in open standards.
  • Super Sales Engineer: you’re the ultimate weapon in winning over new customers: able to talk about your company’s products, technology and roadmap with a depth and vision that nobody else can match. You live to win and can light up a room.

Internal

  • Super Engineer: you’re a prolific and accomplished coder. You define the architecture and lead innovation by example. Every time you step up to a whiteboard, the team gets inspired by what you imagine and accomplish together.
  • People Leader: you manage the engineering team, and in special cases the product and design teams as well. You’re constantly recruiting new talent and mentoring existing employees. You’re focused on shipping great product, and manage the team to quality and velocity metrics. You’re either performing the VP of Engineering role yourself, or that person reports to you.
  • Innovator/Disruptor: you’re constantly on the hunt for the “next big thing”, whether it’s a new technology or a new product. You live to disrupt the industry and your existing business, and you accomplish it all with a talented but small team.

To reset your role into something that makes more sense, I suggest the following:

  1. Use the five flavors as a framework for discussing with your CEO and the rest of the exec team what your role should encompass.
  2. Be honest with yourself about your existing skills, what you are most passionate about learning next, and most importantly what the company needs from you.
  3. Agree to an internal vs. external balance for your version of CTO. It’s challenging to mix the two and they require very different skills, so it’s important to be clear. I even talked to TechCrunch about this topic.
  4. Make your role changes proactively vs. waiting until things break or until you’re miserable by re-assessing every two years.
  5. Ask for feedback, both inside your company as well as from other CTOs.
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Richard Hansen

Written by

Software Engineer at Facebook

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