VPE/CTO
I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about the difference between a CTO and a VPE. I realized that with this question I hadn’t done…
I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about the difference between a CTO and a VPE. I realized that with this question I hadn’t done a good job organizing my thoughts around the two roles and wanted to take this opportunity to break down the various responsibilities and talk about the roles, so here we are.
I like to start by understanding what the responsibilities are and working backwards from there. Why do I approach it this way? Because what you might need from your VPE and CTO often depends on what you want to get done in your organization and the strengths of the people who might be in the role.
It is critical to get strong senior technical leadership in the organization. This ensures that your technology, delivery and people are all operating well and aligned strategically with the business. Let’s go through some of the things that you may need for your organization:
Technical strategy
Architecture
Company strategy
Hiring, retention, engagement
Coaching
Execution and delivery
Performance management
Technical vision
Fundraising
Org structure
External representation
IP strategy
The criticality of each of these changes depending on what you are trying to do as an company. Maybe you have a critical need to raise funds. Maybe you don’t need someone on the senior technical side doing customer visits or out doing presentations in conferences.
Now that we have some of the responsibilities out of the way let’s turn to some of the ways we can think about the CTO and VPE roles. I like to think about this as what does each think of first thing in the morning. The CTO thinks about how the technology helps drive the business. The VPE thinks about the organization, people and processes which help to achieve results. In smaller organizations typically both roles are merged together into a CTO position and is often the senior engineer who does a lot of development work. As the team gets larger (usually around 8) the job changes considerably and the need to start running an organization starts being a critical concern and takes a different skill set. There are a few kinds of CTOs out there which should help making the distinction between VPE and CTO more clear:
CTO:
Founder CTO
Sales CTO
Technical leader CTO
R&D CTO
Full technical owner
VPE:
Delivery focused
People orientation
Strategy
As you can see there isn’t a simple answer to what the CTO or VPE does within an organization, but there are general types.
Founder CTO
Typically this is the first engineer in the company who builds the product and becomes a CTO because they were there first and helped to start up the business. This person is very plugged into how the technology works, who the team is and how the business works. This is a critical role early on in the evolution of a company. As the business grows this person could stay CTO, become VPE, be a principal engineer or take some other path.
Sales CTO
If your business does a lot of big contracts, you almost certainly will need someone who can go out in the field with customers and represent the technology and make potential customers be excited about the core technology that is being sold. This is a more externally facing role and I’ve even seen CTO roles be created in businesses solely to support this function.
Technical leader CTO
This role is someone who really is the principal engineer in the organization. They end up spending a lot for of time thinking about the architecture and how that fits with the business. They are responsible for the strategic direction of the technology and how that impacts the business itself. This is the role that most people think of when they see the CTO as the core technologist of the organization.
R&D CTO
This CTO is responsible for experimenting with his risk projects and creating focuses more on intellectual property. The CTO will likely have a team of engineers working for the office of the CTO and can have a high failure rate as they tend to be entirely new to the organization and perhaps the industry.
Delivery focused VPE
This is the bread and butter of a VPE. This is a focus on what projects need to be delivered when and how the organization will get them done. The wider business relies very heavily on the technology organization to help drive the business. It does this by shipping valuable technology to the customer. If the engineering team isn’t focused on delivery then it isn’t providing it’s value to the wider organization and customer.
People focused VPE
This VPE focuses on the people and making sure they have great development opportunities and that the right people are brought in. If you have the right people on board and they are excited for the road ahead you can do incredible things. A good VPE knows this and puts this on the top of their priority list.
Strategy VPE
This VPE tends to be in larger organizations and often times takes both the CTO and VPE hat. They are really focused on the technology strategy and how the organization is constructed to make sure the organization gets to where it needs to be.
In reality your VPE or CTO is going to do a blend of these various things, but the focus of the role should be defined by what the organization needs. It’s hard to have a Strategy VPE that isn’t focused on delivery for example. What is critical is to know what the org needs and make sure you plan for someone who has the right strengths for where you believe the organization is headed.