[ScottWhigham]

I think you are thinking that the term "startup" applies only to a particular size company. Can a 100-person company still be a startup? I think a lot of people would say, "Yes." And you often don't get to be a 100-person company if somewhere along the way you didn't have some really bright person performing that function. Your founders aren't always genius tech guys and, TBH, you can't always pry great tech talent away from other great companies without fancy title "upgrades"...

[tptacek]

I don't want to wade into the "startup semantics" thing, which is almost as bad as "hacker/cracker". We're a startup, except we're not, because we're profitable and we've been around for 4 years. Etc, etc.

I'm saying the CTO title is bad for two reasons:

* It's a deceptively bad title to assume, because to a lot of people, it denotes someone who has stepped away both from coding and from actively managing MRDs and roadmaps. There are smart people with CTO titles, but, like it or not, there are a lot of dumb people with CTO titles too.

* The role itself is weak compared to the VP/E, who owns the dev schedule, and the VP/PM, who owns the roadmap and the customer contacts. Both those roles can win arguments with appeals to authority that the "CTO" can't counter.

It's not that marketable. It's a vulnerable and (often) superfluous role. It's a net lose. Avoid it!

[arohner]

Thanks for the clarification. Both of your replies have been more productive than your original comment.

[tptacek]

Glad you approve.

[firstlastname]

So, what if you're in a start-up doing a CTO's job, VP/E and VP/PM. What job title should you have in your opinion? It's also my understanding VP/E and VP/PM report to CTO usually.

[tptacek]

The VP/PM's I've known reported either to CEO or to VP/M. The VP/E's I've known invariably reported to CEO. I'm not saying it never happens that the CTO heads engineering, but I don't think that's typical.

[evgen]

I guess this depends on startup size. I think most technical co-founders see the hierarchy divided between a CE(xec)O and a CE(ng)O and tend to call that second slot the CTO. After twenty employees or so the VP/E tend to take over the real management duties and the CTO tend to be an architect role that slowly loses influence unless the CTO active asserts themselves.

[tptacek]

There are soooo many ineffectual CTOs, and even more ineffectual architects --- if you want to be the tech vision founder, why not stay right next to revenue and become VP/Product Management? Trying to make the (IMO notorious) CTO position work seems like playing to lose.