[OccamsMirror]

Is this a comment need? I've plenty of experience with early stage startups, but they either already have a CTO, have a motivated senior engineer, or somewhere in the middle. My experience is that it's rare they can even identify what they need and why.

[bravesoul2]

I think the need is rare to be fair. Good call.

The guy whose job it is to collate all jobs like this only posts 20 a week (some recurring) over all disciplines not just engineering.

There may be creatable demand. "Hire me for $200/h 10h a week and I'll make your current 5 people 50% more productive, yod have to pay them 20% more but you are still up 2.5 devs for the price of 1" could be a good consultancy sell. How you would do that is do normal (small-shop) CTO things. Make them more productive by the right focuses and processes not just more caffeine and late nights.

[OccamsMirror]

That's a big call! I don't know if I'd be brave enough to promise making devs 50% more productive. Definitely a good consultancy sell but I wonder about what the delivery would actually be.

I have a pet theory that the standard practices in software development actually reduce productivity, at least in the short term. From my experience, the sure fire way to get teams to be more productive is to first hire great people, then to empower them and make sure their morale is high.

Not sure how I could do that on a consultant basis. I can imagine how I'd bring tighter project management in, and make sure people are doing what they're best at. But actual long lasting productivity of a team I don't really directly manage?

Someone who can do that is a wizard.