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What do aeronautical engineers do?what's their job?

What is the job of a CTO in a company where engineers are managed by specific product teams under Chief Product Officer?

  • I have been offered CTO job in a growing enterprise software product company (current revenue of about $30M). I see that they already have a Chief Product Officer who has "product teams" report to him. The "product teams" consist of product managers as well as director of engineers who build the products. I have been CTO of 2 companies in the past but in each case, engineering team reported to me. What would be the key responsibilities of a CTO if  all the engineers and product people report to another department?

  • Answer:

    New products and proof of concept for those products.  To assist in this process, I would expect the CTO to have a small team of really creative engineers.  The Vice President of Engineering manages development and maintenance of existing products; this VP is the keeper of the present.  The CTO is the keeper of the company's future; if done right, it's an extremely important job.

Dick Karp at Quora Visit the source

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I would be very surprised if the CTO has no engineering teams reporting to him/her at all.  It's more likely that there are different engineering groups reporting to the CTO and CPO. If so, eBay (where I currently work) has had this type of organization structure since 2013.  The CPO's organization includes product managers and engineering teams that focus on building those products, grouped by application domain areas.  On the other hand, the CTO's organization comprises engineering teams that focus more on developing the common platforms and data/systems infrastructure upon which our products are built, as well as cross-cutting architectural and engineering concerns.  Both are large and deep engineering organizations, but with decidedly distinct focus areas and development cadences. This type of organization structure makes a lot of sense for a tech company like eBay, where engineering isn't an isolated function but one of our core company-wide business activities.  But a less tech-focused company would of course be more likely to have all of its engineering concentrated under a CTO-type role.

Kelvin Lim

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