And then I saw this ad - the emphasis is my own
(here is the original link - but as with most job sites it won't stay active for long)
"Chief Architect (CTO role) - Agile, SOA . .
IMPORTANT: Strong preference given to candidates from eBay, Amazon, Microsoft, MSN, Google, Yahoo, Netflix, other large ecommerce or software product companies . . . . . Must not be too high-level and still able to code and mentor Engineers. Will also have led large teams, and influenced/impacted even more people through their thought leadership.
This is a Chief Architect role that is at a CTO level! In this role, you will lead a team of hands-on architects in envisioning, building, and evangelizing the companys IT technology strategy. Their greatest challenge will be to harness the creativity of their agile development team and direct it in the disciplined pursuit of their aggressive business objectives. With the goal of meeting their business objectives, you will create and lead the execution of a multi-year architectural roadmap for their growing portfolio of software and hardware."
I don't know about you but if I was a CTO / Chief Architect / Enterprise Architect at eBay/ Amazon etc. I'd stay a million miles away from this company - IMNSHO they're really not sure what they want. I mean this is a CxO position - and they want the person to lead architects, mentor engineers and still code. Wow! Perhaps they should look for one who can also be administrative assistant and janitor too?
What do you think? Is this a reasonable request? This is a bad smell to me - someone high-up in the food chain either doesn't really know how software teams work or is unaware of the expectations for what a CTO does at any company bigger than 50 people.
4 comments:
In their defense, it might be true that coding is not a requirement for the gig, but that they want someone who is still "current" (to use aviation terminology) and knows the real world (as illustrated in the previous post CA vs NCA).
I'm thinking of Bill Joy versus Bill Gates. Both are brilliant and can be CTO but if you want someone to talk about nuts and bolts of code/tech as a leader, then my money is on Bill Joy.
(if you are talking all-out world domination then that's another subject ;-)
I think this is a classic example of what many companies did back in 2001-2004 or so. They want the world and I'd be willing to bet that whatever the pay the company is offering it is no where near what it would take to employ a person with that many skills. I agree with the author of this blog, the company is basically putting out a wish list and is not all together sure what they need/want.
I seen ads like this before, they want it all but don'e really know what they want.
I think it down to the fact that there is no standard defination of what a CTO is and what a Architect is.
There are many companies the think project manager is the same as Architect.
I hope this will change with time.
www.kingcsa.com
The problem is that there is an assumption that he will be leading large teams. I'm in a position of making strategic technology decisions for my company, but I only head up 4 guys, so I'm able to code too.
Post a Comment