[damm]

2) CTO's should never code. If they are spending time instead of reviewing other peoples code; trying to find new technologies to help get them where they want to go; they are not doing their job.

The only time it's all right for a CTO to code is in the beginning. After 5-7 people have joined the company they should be reviewing code and tech.

1) My references are personal experience as well other managerial types in Seattle's Startup's.

[nostrademons]

The reason for a CTO to code isn't to get the code written; it's so that they understand what the primary hassles are when their employees try to get the code written.

In any large engineering organization, there are usually several architectural decisions made long ago (often, back when the CTO still coded) that are hampering the productivity of everybody else. Usually, these decisions are so ingrained in the system that nobody questions them, and even if they did, changing them requires the cooperation of many different people or even departments and no individual contributor has that much authority. The CTO is uniquely positioned to actually fix these problems, but when the CTO (or even CEO, if the company has a technical founder) doesn't code, he's usually completely unaware of them or their impact on the organization.