Ask HN: What would you consider to be the roles/duties of a CTO?

  • Here's how I see it:

    Chief Technical Officer = Someone who looks at the market, trends, how their competition or potential competition are evolving their product(s) & trys to anticipate users demand within ~5 years. In other words a CTO is someone who uses their knowledge of tech to make money but they don't think about the exact details; they hire people to do that.

    However, in order to help the CTO companies usually have a CIO (although that role is considered to be diminishing):

    Chief Information Officer = Understands tech & uses it to reduce expenses & contain cost of growth