[lobe]

700 person company, half of which are software engineers. Yes our CTO is extremely hands on, and one of the most insanely gifted developers I've ever met. He was the first hire at the company and has led engineering since.

This works as he is a strong, opinionated, intelligent, yet empathetic person who leads the charge on our engineering standards from the front line. He and the org have realised the problems that come with this approach, so have a head of engineering and the engineering leadership board (including the CTO) that fulfill the other functions of a CTO, such as the people management, resource planning, general process and procedure.

This leads to a great situation where we have a gun of a technical hands on CTO that rallies the troops, but the other typical CTO functions aren't neglected either