80% of Advertised CTO roles are actually Lead Engineer roles

”80% of the CTO roles I’ve considered have "hands on coding" as a requirement. I haven’t made production code in 20 years. I don’t bother applying for those roles".

This is what Jay Alphey said yesterday during our catchup, after not seeing each other since 2019!

Jay was Director of Engineering Operations at various hyper successful Cambridge tech companies, including at Arm, for the last 20 years.

He is what I would call a solid CTO/ VP Engineering type.

For any first time CTO, any aspiring CTO, please read Jay's LinkedIn profile.

THIS is how you demonstrate you think strategically, not as an individual contributor..

Here are some examples I copied from his profile:

● Improved on-time delivery from 20% to 90% through developing and coaching “on-time/to quality” culture and process.

● Improved time to market by a factor of x5, reduced project overruns by x10 in 2 years.

● Increased annual license revenue by 160% in 2 years by building new product development strategy and aligning with business needs cross-organisation.

● Chaired product approvals team reviewing business cases, innovation and product RoI.

● Reduced average project cost overruns from 100% to 10% by improved governance.