What have you experienced CTOs or technical managers learned that only comes with years and years of experience?<p>I ask because I keep hearing young technical cofounders call themselves CTOs, and I think about how much we don't know (I'm fairly young too).
Be humble and remember you do not always have the right answer. Listen to advice from everyone and learn when to take some of it with a grain of salt. Question every piece of information from every source, including your own gut feelings. If you can learn to challenge the boss on financials, listen to your subordinates on their recommendations, and be weary of your own misconceptions, you will do just fine.<p>Best of luck!
if you are clever with HN search, you will find a thread written almost a year back where a CTO talked about being sidelined by a VP-Engineering.<p>The best thing I learned from that was, as a CTO you have to "measure everything and control the conversation"<p>EDIT: got that for ya - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=509571" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=509571</a>
In a startup it's essential that every "hat" has a corresponding head it's on. Being a startup, it's likely that many heads will have many hats; to mix metaphors just make sure all the bases are covered.<p>Drilling down, as "CTO" I'd consider myself responsible for making sure of all the following (needless to say, this isn't an exaustive list):<p>Business continuity: if you're the only one diligent enough to make sure you're backups are happening and work, do it (in the bad old days that meant running the tape backup every day). Never be too proud to sweep the floor.<p>As CTO, you're responsible for "what": the architecture and consistency of your systems. Visit the Joel Test and do it in reverse.<p>Depending on the people below you, you can leave a lot of the "how" to them, ideally you'll mostly supervise there. Ideally they'll come to consensus on contentious issues, beware of playing the role of a tiebreaker.<p>Ah, yes, the people: learn how to recruit well. There's lots of good advice to be found there (e.g. go to the Ask the Headhunter site and use it in reverse). For specific advice, I'll note that one of my best bosses would never hire someone who he had doubts about. In a startup, it's generally the case that a wrong hire is worse than no hire at all.<p>Sales, marketing, manufacturing (if that's an issue) and technical coherence. Make sure everyone is on the same page. That's one of the things that killed Symbolics, e.g. they spent a lot of money on a factory that couldn't make what engineering was designing, not that marketing was promoting what engineering was designing or the reverse.<p>Make sure there's a product manager for each product, his job is among other things to help make sure the above is happening.<p>Good luck!
Stop being worried about having a "title" and do the job and you will pick up as much experience as you can. If other people want to call you a CTO, let them, but it's just a name.<p>Founders who give themselves the important buzz word titles is a false positive to productivity. Like joining a gym and not working out. You get instant gratification just from joining.
Mgrs manage... most of the time they dun do technical shit! more importantly is that u, not other. u being a CTO wat can u do to make things fast with IT.