I saw a post today about how it was a “red flag” if the first questions your new CTO had was about the technology stack you’d used to build your product.
The author was arguing that the CTO role is now is so much about product, that talking about technology is an indicator you’ve got a CTO that’s too old fashioned.
I’ve been meaning to do a post on this for a while, and this seems to segue nicely. The CTO role has changed, particularly over the past 10 years, aligned with how a successful technology business needs to be more than just excellent at producing something that delights the customer – i.e. the importance of product design, user experience, and customer experience is now so much more important than it used to be, not just for the CTO role, but any CxO role, or any role top down with the business. Product is everything.
But you do also need specialisation, and any specialist will ask questions central to their domain (like what tech stack did you build on), because they have to smoke out any issues.