

Husband, father and only son. Programmer and entrepreneur. Violinist in a past live.
If one of the developers is highly respected by the other developers within the team for his/her architectural skills, then you might be looking at your CTO (or Chief Architect), but the challenge often is — who had what title first. And for that, I offer a focus on responsibilities, not titles.
A VP Engineering is ideally a great manager and a great team builder. He or she will be an excellent recruiter, a great communicator, and a great issue resolver. The VP Eng’s job is to make everyone in the engineering organization successful and he or she needs to fix the issues that are getting in the way of success.