This can work, imho, IFF the organization has both a CTO and CIO (or someone else tasked with managing the org). I've seen lots of places where the CTO is purely the technical visionary/advisor/final decision maker, and doesn't directly manage the technical organization.
This scenario is far more common outside of the tech industry, where you usually have a CIO running the IT cost center, and a CTO making decisions about technology adoption strategy.
The technical capacity of a CTO matters less then the CTOs ability to stay in their lane (for a lack of a better term).
I once worked for a company with a self taught CTO (and not the good kind). They had a number of star players, and this CTO would frequently lash out at them. All because he was getting in the way of them doing their jobs, doing work he wasn't qualified to do, trying forcing them to clean up after him, and then yelling at them for it. It was insanely toxic. I only lasted a few months. It was so bad I back channelled patches and project briefs to people he liked to get them approved.
Had this CTO remained people, project and product focused everything would have been fine.
> this CTO would frequently lash out at them [...] doing work he wasn't qualified to do, trying forcing them to clean up after him [...] and then yelling at them for it
Was that a Fintech in Germany, by any chance? :)
I once witnessed a meeting between a CTO and a Tech Lead. The CTO was attending from his laptop in an open office, and he was yelling in Russian for one hour straight at another Tech Lead because he wanted the tech lead to finish his work. It was a pathetic display, with the whole company watching and wondering what was going on.
Eventually he was "phased out" by having a few people promoted to VP of engineering who would deal directly with the CEO instead of him.
Last I heard he tried to rewrite the financial core in Golang by himself, but he failed since nobody wanted to work together with him and he doesn't really knew the language.
Self taught in the programming sense, or the people management sense? Because I feel like the letter is much more common than not in software. Just curious in case there's an expected background you're thinking of when you say that. I have no point of reference for CTO backgrounds beyond generic MBAs or senior devs that either gave themselves the titles as founders or failed upwards.
CTO, CIO, and the head of engineering (the latter of which can often be split among different groups) are often very distinct things, especially at larger companies. And, yes, while the CTO probably has a seat at the table for technology direction is often primarily a public technology face of the company as opposed to someone involved in a lot of hands-on day to day technology implementation.
“Probably has a seat at the table for technology direction” is a wild take to me. So much so that I can’t even formulate a response other than “what…?!”
I'm not sure what you find confusing. Someone can have an advisory and essentially technology evangelist role without necessarily being the ultimate decision maker. (And, at a larger company, a variety of folks--including the board--will ultimately make final consequential decisions.)
In most companies I've been a part off, including multiple >$1B tech companies, the CTO's focus is not on the engineering. That's the job of a VP Engineering or some similar position.
CTO (which will sometimes have a "CTO office") is to work besides the engineering on investigating new technologies and ideas that are beyond what the engineering organization would have otherwise done on the day to day. They are also an authority on all technology in the company but are not in the engineering "chain of command".
That said this is not universal, there are organizations where the CTO does lead the engineering organization. I think that's sub-optimal because there is always going to be tension between the day to day and the broader scope and those should be different roles.
In a startup, it is more common for a CTO to lead engineering because there is not yet enough to justify having both a VP Eng and a CTO and perhaps most of the work is around figuring out technologies. But as the company grows it makes sense to separate those functions.
I've seen both. A CTO office that also leads engineering--typically via a direct report to the CTO--and an organization where the CTO is largely an external evangelist (typically with a small staff) while engineering is a separate organization--though hopefully aligned. The view here where CTO is also the head of day-to-day engineering operations and technical vision is more of a small company/startup thing. The two are often separated to at least some degree at larger operations.
This description is accurate to what I have seen and what I do. I'm a CTO of a >$1B tech company, and my roles is focused around the technology innovation, and that includes evaluating and prototyping new tech. In my particular case that role also includes the operation of our technology because that is very central to our business - and also extremely focused on high reliability.
When I was CTO of my startup I had far more direct engineering development work, but that is typical in the building stage.
As for the core of this post, the one thing I do agree with is the ability of the CTO to actually be technical. I write code all of the time, but not for our products. The goal is to remain both technically proficient but also focus that proficiency on leadership.
There is a big leap between them not being the sole person responsible for technical decisions and them not even necessarily having a seat at the table for technology direction. The former is understandable. Later - quite surprising.
I'm not sure what I wrote that's contrary to any of that? Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "probably"? There are a lot of people responsible for the technical direction of a large company of which the CTO is important but hardly the only one.
This scenario is far more common outside of the tech industry, where you usually have a CIO running the IT cost center, and a CTO making decisions about technology adoption strategy.