[johnjwang]

(Author here) I stand by this comment and I think it’s really important for engineers to recognize that everyone has different places where they gain and lose energy.

My team and I have been extremely lucky in hiring Joe, our excellent head of engineering, and an extremely strong set of engineering managers. Not to mention incredibly strong product and user experience management.

I think it’s pretty obvious that my approach wouldn’t work if I didn’t have this bench of talented managers, but because I do it affords me the luxury to spend time doing things that I love and which are also valuable to the company.

In general, I wrote this article because I think that the classical approach to engineering management isn’t the only path you need to take, and a lot depends on the team you work with (thankfully we have a team that complements each other really well).

[godzillabrennus]

I'm glad you are comfortable coming forward and for sharing your thoughts. Not to pile on with the others here but you may go fast alone but you go far together when you build the right team. Being an individual contributor CTO is not being a CTO for a business that succeeds at scale. Don't stop doing what you love if you feel that's more important but it's probably best to step back from being a CTO and hire someone to manage that role so you can code if you don't want to do the job.

[Kudos]

You mention in the article you have no direct reports. Who does engineering report into in that case?

[chipsrafferty]

It sounds like you are CTO in title only