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