6 ways CTOs lost credibility with the engineering team

6 ways CTOs lost credibility with the engineering team:

1. Doing production code cause it’s fun, rather than doing prototype code that helps the company deliver the business strategy.

2. Not being seen as an ally. Taking credit for things done by members of the team (and not by the CTO), as to their mind this is the equivalent of showing that engineering is “a united team”. Or sees it as “because I was their boss when they did that, this surely also counts as my work”.

3. Not shielding the engineers from pressures from the CSuite, nor negotiating realistic targets for engineering in the C Suite.

4. Being afraid of the engineering expertise of others in the engineering team, rather than wanting to guide their development and inspire them to have wider impact.

5. Flying by the seat of their pants, having no vision, strategy or plan of where things are doing. Jumping from crisis to crisis.

6. Suffering from hero syndrome due to insecurity — Hoarding code and knowledge — creating the culture and situation that they constantly have to “fly in” and rescue the engineers because the code they originally created is so complex and they never explained to anyone how it is architected.

What else can make a CTO lose credibility with their engineering teams?

Post partly inspired by Bob Salmon and Marc van Neerven.

#cto #ceo #engineers #teams #leadership #reengineeringleadership