Inspired by some discussion on Hacker News about whether it was a bad career move to switch from “CTO” to “developer”, I want to talk about CTOs. Specifically, CTO is not a real job and you should likely not aspire to be one1 especially if you view yourself as primarily someone who sticks to engineering career ladders, either as a manager or as an individual contributor. TLDR: Don’t trust anyone who’s a “CTO” that’s not a technical cofounder.
