As someone who's been a CTO at times in the past, I wish I'd worked with a CEO like that. There are few things worse than having a leadership team who don't trust you to deliver the tech that drives the company's ideas.
Of course overly managing the CTO is also bad, but would you really like to "go sometimes months" without talking to the CEO? Especially during a pandemic in which your product becomes the hot new thing?
It would be absolutely alarming to go even a week without speaking to the CEO in some capacity. How can you have a strong leadership team if they aren’t communicating?
yeah, on the surface it is a bit weird, Peloton has capital intensive hardware, there should be some interaction as to how much capital is allocated to the technology, product releases etc.
I mean I get the sentiment but months? Which kind of company size are we talking? I'm not saying you should talk to your CEO every week, but twice a year sounds really weird to me.
I mean you are both part of the executive team. The CEO is an immediate part of your working group. You probably should be talking almost daily at times.
It would be like the product manager never talking to their team’s engineering manager. The two are tied at the hip—at least in orgs I’ve worked at.
Although I agree with the other child posts here, I also agree with your sentiment. As a CTO, an interfering CEO is worse than one who doesn’t engage at all. But ideally it’s a collegial relationship.
Having your CEO change course every two months is definitely worse - just let me finish something! (it was a hardware company so there's not really such thing as a pivot)
How do you make sure you are aligned and that you both see the problems, challenges and opportunities that one party sees?
This looks more like a traditional company than a tech company, which is not helped by it being based in NYC. The CEO and CFO are probably buddy-buddy while the CTO is an outsider "geek."