Source: LinkedIn post by James Everingham.
Are you sure you want to hire a CTO?
CEOs/founders often ask me for guidance on hiring a world-class CTO. However, when I ask why they want a CTO, they almost always describe the responsibilities of a VP / Head of Engineering. And it's often to solve the problems from scaling.
With engineering team growth, managing takes longer, processes are necessary, and things start to break. CEOs seek to add to leadership, but a CTO hire may be wrong. Let me explain with a personal story about my role at Instagram and why they brought me in.
Before I joined Instagram, Mike Krieger, the cofounder, acted as both CTO and VP of Eng. He did a fantastic job at both but wanted to focus on the product and technology – not the management stuff. So, he hired me as the Head of Engineering to help out.
With me installed as the Head of Engineering, it initially confused managers. Team members were used to going to Mike for escalations, decisions, advice, and direction. So we decided to write our job descriptions and clarify our roles. At a high level, here is where we landed:
Mike, as CTO, owns the tech vision & roadmap, builds the engineering brand, plans IP, researches new technologies for internal adoption, co-develops product plans with the senior team, leads experimental projects, and helps with senior hires.
As Head of Engineering at Instagram, I oversee team processes, performance, career development, hiring, product delivery, stability, and engineering best practices. I also co-developed the technical strategy with the CTO and worked to ensure its world-class execution.
To further clarify roles, Mike had the great idea of making an example questions routing table:
- PM: "I need to get a project staffed" → VP Engineering (VPE)
- EM: "We're about to kick off a new project, and we want to talk architecture" → CTO
- EM: "I'm having trouble with a team member" → VPE
Writing out our job descriptions, publishing them, and evangelizing them to the teams clarified our responsibilities and who to go to for what, eliminating most confusion.
Mike knew and understood the differences between these positions. He was passionate about technology and coding, not managing people and standing up processes. So lucky for me, he hired a Head of Engineering to help manage the teams, allowing him to focus on the CTO role.
So before hiring a CTO, consider whether a VP/Head of Eng might be what you need. CTO = top technologist, visionary, researcher. VPE = loves managing people, building teams, hiring, organizational architecture, performance management, career development, and processes.