The truth is, the greatest architectural failure was not in code, but in my career path.
I carried the title of CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at ...
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I’m so glad that I didn’t skip a sentence.
The clarity of your narration is incredible. I admire how you express different opinions about your evaluation of your role as CTO and how you felt (or realised) your skills weren’t really flourishing as you’d expected it would with the role.
And I did take my time to go through the comments too. Trust me, I picked a few lessons from your writing and the comments too. 👏
Now, I have to go back to myself and ask myself WHAT I really hope to achieve with the skill that I’m learning, and the kind of environments/roles that I want to put myself (and the skills) in.
Astonishing decision Francisco, people like you remember me that progress stall when we decide others take decisions for use and we only are obedient for the rest of our lifes becuase the initial deal was shiny for our young minds.
You're right, Klinker! Sometimes our young minds are attracted to things it's not prepared for. This taught me I need to keep improving my technical skills and soft skills before trying to get into a similar role in the future.
We want to build from a foundation, not in a reactive way.
Super-honest read. The idea of racing to the title without building the foundations really resonates, thanks for sharing this.
Thanks Joseph! We need to build a strong foundation to keep growing in our careers! Glad to see you learned something new from this blog post :)
While I think you come of as a person who has a good head on your shoulders. The main thing I was thinking is were you really a CTO?
From the post I get that most of the time you were a single developer. In the beginning you listed four technical skills and one business skill. I think the skill list of a CTO is more evenly split between technical and business.
I think a freelancer is more a CTO than you were.
One of the things I think are crucial to be a CTO is leading. Because you were a single developer, you only lead yourself. It can be difficult, but it doesn't compare to people who lead tens or hundreds of people.
I think they lured you with the title to make you work harder than you should. But you were smart enough to take away things from that experience to do the work you love.
The hardest critique is self critique, and it is how you advance as a person.
Thanks for the comment, David! Legally, I was a CTO. By role, as the company is still new, I wasn't executing CTO functions as a whole such as hiring, leading teams or handling budgets. I was delegating people and supporting the business. Ultimately, the role was more of a condition given by the company just to "reward" my work. However, I knew that I was also going to be an actual CTO but with the skills of a mid/senior developer and no proper management experience with teams.
Hence why I decided to prioritize my individual growth and keep mastering backend development. If I'm leading teams, it'll be from learned experience and mastery. Not in a reactive way when I was firefigthing the whole stack and it limited my growth.
Thank you for the clarification.
As you mention you were given the title, but not all the responsibilities.
For me a CTO is more a manager than a developer. A CTO doesn't build a resilient system at 3 AM, they instruct the people to build the system.
I don't doubt you were given the title, my doubt is with the company and if they knew what the weight of the title is.
Like developers learn to build for the realistic scale, companies should not hand out titles that don't fit their personnel structure.
From your post and your comment, I think a more fitting title would be technical lead.
Yes, a CTO is more of a manager for me as well. The CTO title, particularly in a young startup often serves as a recognition of dedication and initial technical ownership more than a reflection of a scaled management role.
I knew I needed to step back and master backend development or another specialized area before I could lead an entire team.
My current focus is precisely on becoming that Technical Lead/Senior Engineer but from a position of mastery. Thanks again for the valuable perspective! I'll keep working towards that true leadership role.
I can see that perspective, but I think it hollows out the title.
When the hierarchy of the company is flat, what is the case in most small companies, I think titles are useless.
It might be good on your resume, but it is more fluff than anything else.
Right. Certainly titles are not really useful in small startups. I'd always prefer to use "Founding Engineer" over CTO in my resume. Even though I was something different legally. 😅
Thanks for all the comments David!
i experienced these in several ways in my life too: when you are being paid very well, and others expectation did not match up, you will not last long and relationship with boss or peers will not match. or when you in sales oriented environment, and you constantly provide support for customer for free (as a presales engineer), likely the boss will terminate your role very soon. or when you constantly like development, but the boss need you to be in a project management mode to delegate the role instead.