The title is a formality, their organization is notoriously flat and being co-founders they probably don't make major initiatives without the other's approval anyways. If anything they're probably just swapping "who sits in the spotlight for this year".
And when you head a tech-oriented company, the difference between CTO and CEO is probably negligible anyways.
I think Tom and Chris are doing a fantastic job running and growing github. I'm just curious how this idea of trading CEO roles without making it public for a while works in practice. I think it could potentially matter to their employees, along the lines Ben Horowitz discussed in his post, "Shared Command" [1] - different situation, but analogous potential muddling of the chain of command.
Obviously some companies with both a CEO and a President can be amazingly successful [2], but tend to still be clear about who is ultimately in charge. It's not that I doubt Tom and Chris share a vision for github and clearly communicate and execute on that vision together; I just wonder when and how that model might hit its limits.
GitHub is not a company floating on some publicly-traded market yet. How they operate internally is of very little business to those on the outside. GitHub can operate anyway they like.
The title is a formality, their organization is notoriously flat and being co-founders they probably don't make major initiatives without the other's approval anyways. If anything they're probably just swapping "who sits in the spotlight for this year".
And when you head a tech-oriented company, the difference between CTO and CEO is probably negligible anyways.