Agile Design Management Part-Time VPE 
www.bothsidesofthetable.com
MAY 13, 2012
Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? This post is designed mostly for non-technical founders. I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?” The VP Engineering aspires to manage teams.
Both Sides of the Table
APRIL 20, 2010
This post is designed mostly for non-technical founders. I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?&#. The best technologists often aren’t amazing people managers. You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be.
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Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 13, 2018
If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. The company was going to hire a VP of Marketing.
Steve Blank
JANUARY 25, 2011
The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.
Steve Blank
JUNE 25, 2009
Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody. Being a manager didnt sound fun - deep down, who really wants to be held accountable for other peoples actions? So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering.
Startup Lessons Learned
DECEMBER 7, 2008
In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. The last thing you need is a manager telling you how to do your job.
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