[tptacek]

"The CTO is the chief engineer" is both false and somewhat circular. It's false because plenty of "CTOs" --- maybe most of them! --- work outside the engineering organization, and are more closely aligned with product management than software development (CTO is very often a customer-facing "role"). It's circular because it leaves open the question of what a "chief engineer" is.

I worry that a lot of HN "CTO discourse" is really wishcasting, about what an "if I was monarch of all the developers" role would be (and then about what it's like to aspire to such a role). No healthy engineering team has such a person!

[adastra22]

The chief engineer is the one who makes final engineering design decisions.

What industry are you in? In deep-tech / hardware the role of chief engineer is well understood. In biotech it is sometimes called chief scientist.

[tptacek]

Wow. I would run, not walk, away from any tech company that had this role.

Since you asked: I'm one of the principals at Fly.io. Before that, I was one of the founders of Latacora, which embeds directly inside of startups for years at a time running their security teams full time. Before that, I founded Matasano Security. Before that, I was a Product Manager at Arbor Networks, after being the lead developer on their DOS product for a couple years. I'll stop there (I'm older than the median HN commenter).

Later

For what it's worth, for companies literally chartered to do scientific exploration --- drug discovery chemistry, for example --- I completely buy that there is a real "Chief Scientist" role, though I can't claim to understand that role well enough to defend it. But that doesn't describe any software company anywhere. Regardless, "CTO" is something different.

[adastra22]

Alright, you be you. Sounds like you’ve not worked in hard engineering firms, so we operate in different bubbles.