[One_adm12]

First of all, there is no such thing as a contract CTO. If you are contract then you don't have a title or any stake in the company, ask for market wages for your skill set and experience. For 80-120 an hour you are a Sr programmer with expert level experience in your specific field as an independant contractor. Note, this doesn't mean you've built 2 websites with Rails and don't know shit about scale or performance. If they have no other technical people on staff and are BS'ing you with a title, run away, this isn't going to work out for you.

[djb_hackernews]

I'd have to disagree. My companies CTO of over 2 years is on a contract and doesn't touch code and I would describe as being in a typical CTO/executive role.

[rush-tea]

so does a CTO need to have coding skills? Or just directing based on his/her technology vision? In my understanding, a CTO needs to know at least some coding and can verify their subordinate code and fix bugs, so forth