Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Fabio Manganiello (fabio@manganiello.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 17:42:30 JST Fabio Manganiello

   Advice to the fellow engineers out there: never work a for tech company that doesn’t have a CTO.

   Or where the role of the CTO is replaced by the more lightweight role of CIO, or worse by a VP of technology that doesn’t sit directly on the board, or reports to someone else in the board.

   It’s a frustrating trend I’m seeing more and more often in the industry (and even my own employer has embraced it for years).

   As technology becomes more and more complex and entangled in all corporate processes, it’s outrageous that those who are in charge of building that technology have reporting lines that end with a CPO or CBO instead of a technical person who can actually bring their voices and technical concerns to the board as a peer.

   Companies that don’t hire a CTO or don’t have one sitting in their board are companies that have a clear statement: “we are not a tech company, we consider tech only as a mean to achieve our goals, we don’t give tech people the same importance we give to product/business/marketing people, we see tech as a mere instrument whose direction should be established by product and business people, not by technical people”.

   Companies that don’t hire a CTO are doomed to never adopt sound technological strategies, they are doomed to be reactive rather than proactive (after all who cares about technical debt if nobody is in charge of making sure that such concerns bubble all the way up?), they instead chase all the butterflies proposed by tech illiterates, and they talk all the time about “pivoting and re-pivoting” because they have simply no clue of what they are doing.

   • Embed this notice
     🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱 (freemo@qoto.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 17:42:28 JST 🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱

     in reply to

     @fabio As someone who just took a company public as CIO and now starting out a new company I founded as CTO (and is well funded with a quickly growing team already) I have to disagree, though I do agree on the point about a VP or someone on the board.

     A CIO is **not** a lesser position to a CTO, in fact it is a greater one from the perspective of an employee. A CIO when no CTO exists is exactly the same as a CTO. When both exist the CTO handles external relations and a CIO handles internal technology. Typicall neither report to the board, only the CEO reports to the board. Thought there are exceptions (both as CIO and CTO I sat on the board as both respective companies and am an owner in both companies).

     The fallacy here is that you are assuming CIO is lesser to a CTO, that is certainly not the case. Also remember there are secondary titles, for example I was CIO **and** EVP (Executive Vice President) which actually meant as CIO I was explicitly above in rank to the CTO, the CTO literally had to report to me.

   • Embed this notice
     🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱 (freemo@qoto.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 17:46:22 JST 🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱

     in reply to

     • Jonny

     @Jonny

     They are arent they...;)

     @fabio

   • Embed this notice
     Jonny (jonny@annihilation.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 17:46:23 JST Jonny

     in reply to

     • 🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
     @freemo @fabio
     Nice paragraphs
   • Embed this notice
     🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱 (freemo@qoto.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 17:51:16 JST 🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱

     in reply to

     @fabio So your saying a CIO trying to do the job of both CTO and CIO is the issue? Therefore I assume you'd say the inverse is likewise true, that a CTO without a CIO is also spread too thin?

   • Embed this notice
     Fabio Manganiello (fabio@manganiello.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 17:51:18 JST Fabio Manganiello

     in reply to

     • 🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱

     @freemo I guess it depends on the company and the person in charge, but my experience is with CIOs without CTOs. In such scenarios, my experience is that the CIO is spread very thin across multiple areas of competency. It’s not really a lesser position, but one that, without a good separation of areas of concern, risks diluting the impact by putting too much on the plate.