All C-suite roles are meaningless outside of large companies.

In large companies, C-suite roles all mean “someone who comes up with company strategy given a particular set of incentives.” E.g.:

• A CEO is the voice of the Board of Directors within the company hierarchy, and—because they can be fired by the Board—is incentivized to strategize in the direction that will give shareholders value and address their demands.

• A COO is ultimately responsible for the company’s operations, both its operational expenses (e.g. product sitting in warehouses depreciating) and operational revenue (liabilities incurred for income unmatched by deliverables); and is on both sides incentivized to strategize in the direction of making the operations pipeline “leaner”—in est, getting other parts of the supply chain to “hold the bag.”

• A CTO (or CIO, depending on the type of company) is ultimately responsible for any IP assets on the balance sheet; and for any expenses that go into producing such IP. As such, they’re incentivized to create and fund R&D efforts (but also to make them lean), and to push to acquire companies with valuable IP (but to be a miser in the M&A negotiations.) They’re also incentivized to find new ways to exploit any technological resources on the balance sheet, in order to increase their liquid value.

• A CPO (Chief Product Officer—not that many stable, large companies have anyone by that name) is ultimately responsible for exploiting developed or acquired IP assets by building operational revenue sources “around” them, and is measured by the new revenue sources they create. This is what a startup’s “business founder” really is, most of the time, except when they’re raising (during which they’re more playing the CEO role.)

I would liken a company’s C-suite to a Congress: it’s a bunch of people with mostly equivalent responsibilities (define top-level strategy and delegate out the execution) but different constituencies driving their beliefs and preferences.

If you’re actually doing anything in your job that a “corporate Congressman” wouldn’t do, then you’re not really in a C-suite role; or, at least, you have multiple roles within the company, and your C-suite role is just a part-time gig.

(I would highly encourage the latter POV: if a technical cofounder is both a CTO and a Head of Engineering, then later they can give away or delegate one of those titles while retaining the other. I say “delegate” because, as a cofounder, they’re a shareholder on the Board, so ultimately they’re “above” whoever the CTO is, through the office of the CEO, even if they don’t personally end up holding any C-suite title in the end.)

>>A CTO (or CIO, depending on the type of company)

I have seen companies that have both. Purposefully before Googling it myself;), my personal experience in such cases CIO would be more business oriented and have a more software/data oriented view; whereas a CTO would be more implementation, technology, infrastructure, enforcement of standards and policies orientation.

Edit, after Googling, other disagree with my experience: CIO is for internal operations, CTO is for external business:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-cio-cto-ra...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/ready-and-enabled/cio-v...

If your company’s IP is in the form of technology, the CTO drives R&D strategy and the CIO is a purely-tactical role; if your company’s IP is in the form of information (e.g. a GIS or other data-product company), the CIO drives R&D strategy and the CTO is the purely-tactical role.

In a very large company I see that role. But what's a CTO in a 20-50 people company that also has a VP Engineering which is something I have seen quite a bit.

It's just a name. That's what happens when a three person startup where each person took one C level role grows a bit. A CTO at a 50 person company has fewer people under them than a middle manager at a big company.

um you mean direct reports? here

They probably mean the whole pyramid. Using the ten-is-a-lot metric for direct reports, as a middle manager in a large org I can pretty easily have 8 people report to me who each have 8 people report to them on average. So that’s already more people than the entire headcount of the 50 person company, and I’m only a 2nd tier manager, and may still have a half dozen roles between me and CTO (some of whom will have fewer directs, probably)

Could be skip levels in there if the organization is extremely hierarchical.

VP Engineering isn't a technical role, it's purely management, though usually someone with an engineering background so they can talk to engineers.

VP Eng configures engineering's organizational structure, sets processes, and manages engineering managers.

VP Eng doesn't make architectural or technology decisions.

VP Eng is a good hire for many startups that start out with a CTO who isn't a specialist in management (which will be most founding CTOs).

What does the CTO do? Who makes architectural or technology decisions?

CTO title makes sense when the company is growing big. Apart from managing engineering leaders, CTO's approve decisions to share the trajectory of the company. For eg. should go with aws or gc or azure. How it helps to future of our company. We need to invest in ML or AI or xyz because we see that is the future. The day today engineering/architecture will be driven by Architects OR engineers close to the problem.

Do tech companies have CTOs? I can see that role more in a company that doesn't focus on tech. In a tech company I can see that role quickly devolving into something like the "architects" in IT departments who do pretty diagrams and presentations the whole day but are totally out of touch with what's really happening.

CTO sets the technical and architectural vision, also security and toolchain being used etc. You can think of it as CTO is leading the technical vision, while a VP of E is helping out managing the team on a daily basis, organizing the product work, managing sprint resourcing etc.

If your actually a Director its not just a cool title.

hahaha this post is funny in so many ways.

Why you are aware of the duties of a "director" of a company I take it.