Chief technology officer and VPE

CTO, as its name implies, is the chief technology officer. In a startup company, it generally refers to the technical partner, who is responsible for the establishment of the internal culture and vision of the technical team, and also takes into account the business docking with the external team. CTO must be familiar with the company's current business direction and technical reserves at hand. With the growing scale of the company, CTO has two choices: to stay as CTO and recruit VPE to be the CTO of VPE. So what is VPE?

VPE (vice president of engineering) can be regarded as a technical model in the team. Most key problems have been solved or promoted, and the quality of product development and delivery is responsible. The work of recruiting new people is generally done by VPE.

In many start-ups, the role difference between CTO and VPE will be blurred at first, especially when the company is small, and their work will be repeated. Their division of responsibilities gradually became clear with the expansion of team size, and the relationship between CTO and VPE was collaboration rather than subordination.

From the perspective of division of responsibilities, some people outside CTO and inside VPE have opposite understandings of these two titles, as shown in the figure. In any case, it is best not to think about what to do and what to do alone.