Role of a CTO in an eye of a programmer/developer?

Question

I know that we all have stories of a pointy-haired boss who shouldn't even gets to be near a computer let alone use it.

But just so to avoid being that very person everyone gets tired of talking to, I was wondering...

What is an ideal CTO like in your opinion?

i.e. If you can say something to your CTO in the face and not get fired for it, what would it be?

I know that this is not directly programming related but a CTO job definitely has to do with the what and the how of the programming tools and platforms that we gets to use, so a role of a CTO in a company definitely effects our day job developing software one way or another, no?

Answer 1

The person who says: "I know enough about our business that we need 'X' technology which will cost X dollars and give us this amount of return." As well as, convince the other C-level executives to follow the plan in the time-frame and resources necessary. And convince the IT department that this plan will work and they have management support, but know enough about technology to not get too big a whiff of the smoke that some IT staff will try to blow.

Where do I sign up?

Answer 2

If you can say something to your CTO in the face and not get fired for it, what would it be?

"We can't possibly implement all of those features, refine them, test them, and debug them in the time frame you're suggesting."

Well, I can dream!

Answer 3

At my company, at least, I'm not really sure if the CTO really affects our choice of tools. Usually he's doing very broad strategic things, what directions we should move in, etc. Of course, if he says "We should start doing things in the mobile market, specifically on Symbian devices", then yes that will affect our choice of tools and platforms. But if it's more along the lines of "we should start creating networking appliances to fill that market niche", that doesn't really tie us to anything.

This of course will vary based on the size of the company. My company is >25 years old and has ~1500 people located all over the world, so my CTO may be dealing with things a bit different than a 15 person co-located dev shop.

My preference in a CTO is someone with vision, someone who is able to lead, and preferably someone who has been in non-management positions in the past. They shouldn't micro-manage or dictate, but they should use their market savvy, experience, and intuition to get the company pointed in a direction that leads to success.

Answer 4

Company < 10 years old and <150 people on the Tech Team. Independent division of a Massive Global Corporation. Our CTO still comes to Technical Reviews (pre-Coding) and Design Reviews. He still has opinions on how to do things technically (strategies or approaches for code or queries) and they're not wrong. Sometimes he misses the real low-level details that prevent us from doing exactly that, but it's not a wrong approach.

I argue with him all the time. Usually it's of the form "That won't work because of X, Y, Z" and he goes "X doesn't matter to clients, ignore it; For Y & Z, okay use your approach."

When I started he explained: My job, as CTO, is to protect you, the developers and dbas, from all the corporate horseshit that goes on in our parent companies, and let you focus on producing quality services for our clients.

And that's good. It's my number one request. He works to get us the servers, tools, time, distraction-free, good working environment, sufficient salaries, and keeps him employees happy.

Answer 5

As far as I can tell, our CTO's (company >80 yrs and >100k employees) role is to reorganize the IT organization because the last CTO's organization totally sucked. I think we're on our fourth in my time.

Answer 6

I think my hope for a CTO would be someone who I can learn from and who can decide what direction makes sense at a very high level. I don't really want someone telling me how to layout my code necessarily but rather someone who can suggest tools, methods, and strategies that will help me succeed.

Answer 7

Well, in my case it wouldn't be a CTO but a CIO as I work in an IS department. Chief Information Officer is a little different from Chief Technology officer to my mind in a few ways. A major one being how IS can be viewed in contrast to Product Development which can also use technology to complete its objectives.

To my mind the big role that the CIO is to have is to understand the delicate balance involved in all the tech that a company uses on a regular basis. For example, what systems do we have now that are more of a hazard to the company because the version we use is so out of date or we need a system that has greater capacity as we are overtaxing the existing system. An example of the latter would be a CRM system designed for about 50 agents but the company now has about 400 agents with more coming and the system doesn't scale well. Alternatively, if there is some system that hasn't been patched or changed in 5 years, this may be a warning sign that a replacement should be investigated as there may have been some advances in this kind of software that makes getting something newer more favorable. While the company can't just go out and hire 1000 more people and start 101 big IS projects, I would like to know how well are things planned out over the next couple of years.