8. How does the job of a CTO change over
time?
Assumptions:
- You started as CTO of a small startup
- You are coding on the critical path
- Every engineer reports to you
- Team grows
11. WHY DOES THAT HAPPEN?
● Organisational issues:
○ Onboarding not sufficient
○ Effort for hiring
○ Wrong hiring
○ Wrong organisation (dependencies kill you)
● Exceeded the optimal growth rate
12. Some things that happen to you
- You are still the go to person for technical work, no time (or experience) to
manage the new engineers
- A lot of new stakeholders appear
- There is suddenly a management team, where you need to be present
15. What happens to the role
Focus shifts from technical contributions to team building and collaboration with
other departments
16. What makes it even more difficult?
Engineering is usually the biggest and fastest growing department in a startup
Therefore all the team scaling challenges are here first! E.g.:
- Career paths
- Training of managers
- Hiring processes
- Communication...
17. What stops you from changing?
- Old habits
- Missing knowledge
- Or… no passion for management work
18. What to do?
Two alternatives:
● Hire an experienced people manager (VP Engineering) - not covered here
● Adapt and learn it yourself
20. Can I still code?
● Don’t code on the critical path (that is the easiest way to NOT scale the team)
● Your task is to give context, explain, mentor other engineers
● But do technical work as long as possible...
22. Disclaimer
● I know that everyone is different, every company is
different and there is probably not a single
person/company where all these points are true
23. The 5 sins of a startup CTO*
● Pride
● Isolationism
● Being a Bottleneck
● Lack of self awareness
● Shiny technology over business value
24. Pride
● In a growing startup just staying at the CTO position is
basically a promotion
● Give up the title if needed
● Accept that other people might be paid more than you
25. Isolationism
● Thinking about engineering in isolation
● To deliver business value there is more needed than just
engineering
● Us vs. them
26. Bottleneck
● Sometimes conscious - sometimes unconscious
● Not cool: All communication runs through you
● Your job is to make sure that everything runs without you
27. Lack of self awareness
● What are your strengths?
● What is your passion?
28. Lack of self awareness
● If you had the choice between coding for a day or
organizing teams/hiring: What would you choose?
30. Shiny technology over business value
● Use simple (not outdated) technology which delivers what
you need
● Goal is to make the business successful, not to use e.g.
Microservices
34. WHAT TO DO?
● Anti Pattern: We are cash restricted, we only pay very low
salaries and get what we pay for
● The way to do it right: Find the right balance and pay a few
highly qualified engineers (referral trap)
45. HOW TO DO IT?
● Build Delivery Teams: Self-sufficient teams that include all
the functions necessary to develop software from idea to
launch.
● 95% rule
53. WHAT TO DO?
● Identify main stakeholders
● Have a monthly 1on1 with them
● Typical candidates: Main Product, Design/UX, Marketing
people
54. Summary
● Job changes radically when company grows
● Adapt or change your role (seek support)
● Take care of how to scale teams!
● Engineering is not an island
