cto vs. vp of engineering
Post on 15-Jan-2015
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CTO vs. VP of Engineering:Whatʼs the Difference?(And does it matter?)
CTO
jason@joyent.com
Jason Hoffman
@jasonh
VP, Engineering
bryan@joyent.com
Bryan Cantrill
@bcantrill
The genesis of this talk
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CTO vs. VP of Engineering
• In many startups especially, the difference between a CTO and VP of Engineering becomes blurry
• There is often enough overlap that one person can do both jobs when the company is tiny...
• ...but as a team expands, the need for distinct roles grows
• One is not necessarily subservient to the other — both roles are critical and they must work as a team
• What are these roles?
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CTO?
• The CTO is the Chief Technology Officer, and in a startup, will likely be the technical co-founder
• The CTO establishes the vision and culture
• The CTO must be as technical as required to validate the vision and the culture
• Beyond this, the CTO is (or should be) largely outward facing — the CTO should understand the relationship between the technology and the larger world
• As a company grows and expands, the CTO will be at a crossroads: become the VP of Engineering and hire a CTO, or remain the CTO and hire a VP of Engineering
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VP of Engineering?
• The Vice President of Engineering is responsible for the development and delivery of the product
• Critically, this includes the recruitment of the team
• Should be the exemplar of engineering
• Should be an engineer that the team feels comfortable looking to on a wide range of technical problems
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So who innovates?
• Neither the CTO nor the VP of Engineering is singularly responsible for innovation; they most foster it together
• They must create a culture (CTO) and a team (VP of Engineering) that is empowered to think big
• Both CTO and VP of Engineering must — as a team —embrace ideas, explore them and expand upon them
• The CTO must communicate them upward and outward
• The VP of Engineering must distill them into shipping product or functional system
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Anti-patterns
• Because the specifics of the roles can vary significantly from company to company, itʼs hard to prescribe one “right” way to divide the CTO from VP of Engineering
• Easier to define the wrong way
• There are particular anti-patterns for these two roles that seem to represent common failure modes
• Broadly, CTOs fail when they think that they are engineers, not communicators; VPs of Engineering fail when they think they are managers of people, not creators of useful things
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CTO Anti-pattern: The Critic
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VPoE Anti-pattern: The Process Queen
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CTO Anti-pattern: The Control Freak
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VPoE Anti-pattern: The No-Op
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CTO Anti-pattern: The Xenophobe
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VPoE Anti-pattern: The Upward Manager
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CTO Anti-pattern: The Creator
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VPoE Anti-pattern: The Cat Herder
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CTO Anti-pattern: The Space Ranger
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VPoE Anti-pattern: The Naysayer
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Thank you!
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@jasonh@bcantrill
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