[dreamer7]

My biggest challenge as a CTO is that, by nature, I'm singular in focus. If I am developing something I find it hard to context switch and review other developers' work. The best strategy I have found so far is to block certain times in the week solely for reviewing everyone's progress.

[koonsolo]

Why don't you do it the other way around? Plan in some focus time to work when nobody can bother you, and for the rest be available for the team.

[bpodgursky]

I think these are both valid approaches for different company sizes. If it's a team of 3-4, you're primarily an IC, who also CTO's. If it's a team of 10-15, it's the opposite.

[sponaugle]

That is interesting. I'm a CTO, originally a CTO of a startup, now CTO of the much larger acquiring company. It is fascinating to see how different the CTO job can be across industries. I find my time is spent in almost the opposite direction, with the majority of it involving deep technical context switched rapidly.. and that really is the skill that I have need to refine the most - the ability apply high focus quickly. Cool to hear other stories.

[zingar]

Interesting, how did you develop that skill?

[sponaugle]

The biggest accelerator, at least for me, was having a child. As anyone who has children know, the first few years are a long sequence of tasks interspersed with small breaks. If you want to get anything done, you have to be able to do it in small increments. On the hobby side for instance, I worked at keeping a running note log with my projects so I could walk in and actually make progress on a project when I only had 10 mins free. I carried a notebook with 'thought areas' that needed some thought applied, and if my daughter was sleeping I might crack it open and look at one of the problems and work on it.

The ability to do real, forward progressing complex work in small chunks has made a huge difference in both my personal life and my professional one. I suspect it will also be helpful as I get older, because eventually great memory skills fade!

[Schwolop]

I second this. Ok, I'm on the Manager schedule now. How do I still make things? Having kids puts you on the Manager schedule (interruptions are to be expected and blocks of time without pre-scheduled interruptions are rare) whether you like it or not.

[Waterluvian]

I'm interested in hearing more about the idea of being an effective CTO while focusing on also being a developer.

I imagine it's necessary for small companies, possible for growing companies, and eventually impossible for sufficiently sized companies where the CTO role is at least 40 hours of your week.

[ido]

I personally find it to become the case with as little as 5-6 developers under me (assuming they are good and I can trust them to program without needing me to step in and solve their problems of their own making on a regular basis).

Also as someone nearing his late 30s I'm sometimes surprised how good some programmers are as young as late teens/early 20s! These rare talents mostly need me to prevent them from going into rabbit holes but when they are pointing in the right direction can produce amazing results.

I am sure my time is better spent helping a few of these do better than what I'd get from just myself programming directly in the same amount of time (management is a multiplier on the team's productivity and that multiplier can easily get smaller than 1.0).

[water8]

Managing a team is just like managing threads. Keep them as autonomous and lock-free as possible

[Schwolop]

I like this. Hadn't heard it before, but it's succinct and as it happens, I agree!