If you are a C-Level executive, no matter what the position, you will need to be able to manage people.
The C-Suite is responsible for setting and steering the vision of the company. In the case of the CTO, that is the Technical Infrastructure (Engineering, Product, and in lieu of a CIO, Security/Operations).
As the company scales, they will have one or more departmental VPs reporting to them (see above), and be responsible for keeping those on track.
Many technical co-founders are *not* CTOs, but are actually senior engineers (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Refer to the Peter Principle for more understanding as to why there’s an innate desire to promote them anyway.
Here’s a great article that explains the requirements of the CTO role that I often refer clients to:
Avoiding A CTO Meltdown: Part 1 – Defining The Role
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Can-a-technical-co-founder-become-a-CTO-VP-of-a-product-dual-instead-of-a-CTO-VP-of-an-eng-dual
Originally Posted On: 2015-01-29