Ask HN: Advice for first time CTO

[PericlesTheo]

I will be joining a small seeded startup as a CTO in the next couple of weeks. What are some of the things you wished you knew /did early on? Looking for advice mainly in culture (both tech and product) and hiring. Anything else of course is truly welcomed.

[wrestlerman]

Never been a CTO, but, don't be afraid to give some of your responsibilities to other people. Not sure how else to describe it, what I mean is just don't expect yourself to do everything, you have dev team for coding, etc.

Make sure your developers have everything they need to do their job: like tools, specs, docs, designs, etc.

And don't be afraid to ask questions to your developers, there is no way you will know the product 100%.

That's a message from a regular dev.

[meh2frdf]

Your a cto of a startup, don’t confuse this with cto of an enterprise, very different level of maturity and experience.

Good luck :)

[malux85]

Your job is to maximise productivity of your team, this means you only hire people you believe in.

I would review about 100 CV's before deciding on 10 interviews and 1 would get hired. It takes an enormous amount of effort but it's worth it for the right people.

Put your ego aside. Pretend you didn't know something so a junior can teach it to you - they will feel good for several days and be mega productive. I mentored a junior all the way through to becoming a senior, and then when he started mentoring younger developers I told him about this, and that I knew most of the things that he was teaching me, and he thought it hilariously funny, but he told me that he used to feel amazing that he taught a senior something. This kind of wisdom comes with experience and age, as your time horizons broaden you start being able to appreciate the near and long term simultaneously.

You also need good people skills, there's going to be technical arguments that you will have to settle, and you will likely not be as expert in the technologies as the participants, and if you're unable to resolve it diplomatically and logically then you may have to pull rank. Stay calm and explain your reasoning, most programmers will respect logical arguments. If someone is very very passionate about a particular choice, then ask them if they are willing to take full responsibility for it's implementation, as long as it's not a critical bit of infra that you cant afford to gamble on. Use good judgement. Maybe the topic can be answered after 2-3 days of experimenting on each choice.

Delegate, delegate, delegate. Give people clear responsibility. Tell them you're depending on them, and want them to step up.

Talk to them about their future and goals. Give them the opportunity to work towards some goal they want in their career, tell them you want to support them. In return they will support you. The more you give the more you get (but hire the right people)

Praise in public. Discipline in private.

Make work fun. I used to award "geek points" for innovative and creative solutions, we didn't keep track rigorously but it was a fun dopamine burst for the people who were clearly extending themselves.

Tease people gently, take away geek points for breaking the build server. Joke and laugh about the time you also broke the build server, or rebooted the clients production machine, or something silly.

A small, well timed gift is a real spirit lifter. Dont do this too often.

Remember that a lot of programmers are introverts, and thus don't want to go to the pub after work, they wanna go home where it's quiet. Respect peoples private time and lives. If you wanna socialise then knock off 2 hours early on a friday, chat for an hour, and then everyone goes home an hour early. Dont do this too often.

That's all I can think of right now, good luck!