Comments on: Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?

By: erichmx

erichmx — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 01:40:16 +0000

Ok, 6 years ago I was the first hire in a mexican tech company, without a doubt I was the Chief Architect stereotype, with time I became CTO and with growth I was "forced" into being the VP of Engineering, at the time I really hated that, but out of necessity I had to start educating myself in this "management thing" and 2 years later I have to say that the main issue to me was that I didn't understood what it meant, if somebody had told me before that it was "the activities, tools and knowledge to maximize the potential of a group/organization of human beings" it would it being very attractive to me.

I'd dare to recommend the one book that made the biggest impact on me about management: Management (Revisited Edition) by Peter Drucker http://www.amazon.com/Manageme.... It has a very logical and at the same time humanistic approach to management.

By: Marcus Shockley

Marcus Shockley — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:00:00 +0000

I’d stay away from online tests. They are often too platform agnostic. We’ve had a lot more success by asking logic or design questions, and we aren’t really looking for a ‘right answer’. We are trying to figure out how a person thinks.

I’d also say that almost all of the CTO’s and VPs of Engineering I’ve met were completely in the wrong profession.

By: Mark Long

Mark Long — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:14:26 +0000

So the CEOs have asked you how to build an engineering team. I'd be willing to wager, twice as many have said, “I think something's wrong with my tech team, I just don't know what…or how to fix it”. Having sold our company last year and gone through the process of looking at Tech Management job opportunities (from startups to larger growth companies), I was shocked at how messed up these tech teams were, and far they let them go before making a change. So perhaps a topic for another day is, what should your growth company CEO be doing to make sure his tech team isn't going off the rails? Interestingly, I'm a few months into my new gig and there are quite a few things that need fixed and when I talk to the CEO about them he says….”you know, that's what the last 2 guys told me.” I'd suggest a future blog/article on how do you know if your tech team is any good? is it metrics? we all know that's iffy, especially early. Is it an advisory group of other Archs/CTO/VP Eng types? On one hand I'm not a fan of consultant types, on the other hand there are many CTO colleagues that I think would do a great job (and I have called on them from time to time).

By: Mark Long

Mark Long — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:14:26 +0000

By: garydpdx

garydpdx — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:46:22 +0000

I'm wondering about point #1 … I recently read a paper called “The Role of the CTO: Four Models for Success” by Tom Berray of Cabot Consultants (McLean, VA) where CTO can be seen as #3) Technology Visionary and Operations Manager and #4) External-facing Technologist. Another paper labeled those as 'inward looking' and 'outward looking', and I guess that different pursuits require one or the other. In an earlier posting regarding Chief Scientists, that person would have an 'inward looking' orientation for the product while the CTO is 'outward looking' balancing their technology direction versus customers' needs.

By: garydpdx

garydpdx — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:46:22 +0000

By: garydpdx

garydpdx — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:37:33 +0000

On the other hand, in my field (electronic design automation – EDA), those 5-6 people usually have different responsibilities so, title or not, you have a CEO, a VP Sales, lead software coder as VP Engineering, lead applications engineer as Director of Applications Engineering, etc. Maybe second junior persons for software coding and/or applications engineering. As top-heavy as that appears, in this field, people expect to remain at the top of the food chain as the company grows – not have additional bosses appear above them. Most team members have done time with one or more (or all) of the Big 3 corporate EDA firms, where advancement is often difficult (EDA start-up founders who are 10-15 year veterans are not unusual)

By: garydpdx

garydpdx — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:37:33 +0000

By: garydpdx

garydpdx — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:07:55 +0000

In large companies, I often see CTO defined as what should be the CIO … basically, heading up the IT operations. I think that only in the technology sector, CTO is better defined (as you wrote, chief architect and visionary). As a lot of technology start-ups grow, the founder CEO moves over to CTO after a business-oriented chief exec is hired (e.g., shortly before or after Round A).

I have been wondering about having both a CTO *and* a Chief Scientist in a university technology transfer scenario. If a professor is involved in the founding team but remains a full time faculty member (with all of its responsibilities and distractions), that means they won't be leaving to devote 120% to the start-up. Someone else needs to be CTO for the company's product(s) and mission. As Chief Scientist, the key role of the professor is recognized and can even continue if further technology transfers happen. Maybe the most famous example is NVIDIA, the graphics chip company. William Daily is a professor at Berkeley and serves as the firm's Chief Scientist (there is a video online from his keynote at last year's Design Automation Conference). But they also have a CTO, who I would imagine factors a lot of variables including Professor Daily's work into the technology roadmap for graphics processors (including a new effort to do other computing besides graphics on those chips).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:07:00 +0000

I have been wondering about having both a CTO *and* a Chief Scientist in a university technology transfer scenario. If a professor is involved in the founding team but remains a full time faculty member (with all of its responsibilities and distractions), that means they won’t be leaving to devote 120% to the start-up. Someone else needs to be CTO for the company’s product(s) and mission. As Chief Scientist, the key role of the professor is recognized and can even continue if further technology transfers happen. Maybe the most famous example is NVIDIA, the graphics chip company. William Daily is a professor at Berkeley and serves as the firm’s Chief Scientist (there is a video online from his keynote at last year’s Design Automation Conference). But they also have a CTO, who I would imagine factors a lot of variables including Professor Daily’s work into the technology roadmap for graphics processors (including a new effort to do other computing besides graphics on those chips).