The VPE & CTO roles
The VPE & CTO roles
The intertwining and evolution of both
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The VP of Engineering (VPE) and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) titles are ones which, I have found, oftentimes to be used interchangeably. The reality, again based on my own experience, is that they are different roles. While they do overlap, they each have distinct responsibilities. This post will outline the commonalities, traits and differences within these two roles. Again, all based on my own experience as a VPE at early stage startups.
To illustrate the differences between these roles, I will describe them along a timeline: before and after a VPE. The reasoning is because almost all startups begin with a CTO, who is typically a co-founder. Initially the founding CTO fulfills both roles: CTO + VPE. Once a VPE is hired, the CTO passes on some of her responsibilities to the incoming VPE. Additionally, the CTO role does change post hiring a VPE .
The CTO role: pre-VPE
The job of the pre-VPE CTO can be viewed as a combination of several different ones, as depicted in the diagram above. The pre-VPE CTO has responsibilities spanning engineering management, day to day software development, product strategy and selling her product. Those are in addition to the founder responsibilities, which can include Board management, fundraising and other similar tasks.
The underlying reasons why the pre-VPE CTO role is so broad has to do with the early phase of a startup. Early on in a startups lifecycle, the startup should be concerned with one activity and one activity alone: getting to product-market fit. As such, the CTO, who is typically the technical visionary, will be multiplexing across various activities spanning product management, sales and engineering in order to prove that the startup has attained product market fit. In fairness, these responsibilities will also fall on the other founders, notably the CEO.
As such, there is no reason to hire a VP of Sales if the startup hasn’t proved that it has attained product-market fit. Likewise there is no reason to scale an engineering team without having reached this significant milestone. As such the introduction of a VPE, amongst other roles, should be about the same time as the startup proved that it has product-market fit. Before that milestone is reached, these roles will oftentimes be fulfilled by the CTO and other founders; the CEO notably acting as VP Product and/or VP Sales.
The CTO role: post-VPE
Once the startup believes that it has attained product-market fit, it starts scaling. This period sees the rapid growth of the startup’s headcount and the introduction of new roles. It is not atypical for a VP of Sales to be brought on and for the acceleration of hiring across all GTM functions. Additionally, hiring across engineering is also scaled The latter will push the CTO to her limits of being able to balance her role and that of the day to day operations of managing a growing engineering team.
Enter the VPE.
The introduction of a VPE alters the role of the CTO as well. The VPE becomes fully responsible for the day to day operations of the engineering organization. This includes people management, staffing, hiring, project management and delivering of the product roadmap amongst others.
One can notice from the diagram above the evolution of the CTO role post-VPE. The CTO becomes a lot more outward facing and no longer concerned with the day to day operations of the engineering team. It is not atypical for the CTO to dramatically reduce, if not stop altogether, coding and directly contributing to product development. Most of the CTO’s energy is externally facing now. She is actively involved in sales, notably by being the technical expert on some sales opportunities, and technical evangelism of the company.
There will oftentimes be some overlap between the CTO and VPE roles. Both will be involved in recruiting activities especially for senior leadership roles across the engineering and product management functions. They might also be involved in customer escalations and every so often, the VPE can be pulled into sales conversations as well.
Finally, I thought I would share some of the traits I have observed in the CTOs I worked with spanning my experience at 4 startups:
75% of startups had a CTO before a VPE. 25% had a CTO and a VPE on founding the company.
100% of the CTOs were co-founders.
75% of the CTOs also also the original VPEs.
100% of the CTOs were actively involved in day to day coding.
75% of the CTOs were no longer coding once a VPE was hired.
50% of the CTOs remained in top 5 of committers of their codebase years after stopping to actively code.
This post is a part of a series that goes into the details of the VPE position and interview structure. Other relevant posts are