Forget delivering food, just a week ago there was a discussion on here where the predominant attitude in the comments was about how CTOs shouldn't be programming, and CTOs who program are wasting their time when they could be doing much more valuable things like the "setting direction" and "vision" of the company.
As someone who is now a C-suite exec, I was aghast reading that discussion. If you're a CTO who doesn't code, so be it do what works for you, CTO is such a broad title that there are plenty of companies that don't need a CTO who codes. But the shock was at how adamant people were that CTOs have better things to do than contribute to software. Not only have I worked with excellent CTOs who all contributed source code to projects, many CTOs I admire and look up to do the same, such as John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Cal Henderson.
There are domains where a CTO absolutely need not code, and coding is not the end all be all of building a technology company by any means, but it's hard to imagine many situations where CTOs who do code are doing it at the expense of a more valuable skill, and furthermore I can think of many companies that would benefit from having CTOs who did actually contribute source code.
As someone who is now a C-suite exec, I was aghast reading that discussion. If you're a CTO who doesn't code, so be it do what works for you, CTO is such a broad title that there are plenty of companies that don't need a CTO who codes. But the shock was at how adamant people were that CTOs have better things to do than contribute to software. Not only have I worked with excellent CTOs who all contributed source code to projects, many CTOs I admire and look up to do the same, such as John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Cal Henderson.
There are domains where a CTO absolutely need not code, and coding is not the end all be all of building a technology company by any means, but it's hard to imagine many situations where CTOs who do code are doing it at the expense of a more valuable skill, and furthermore I can think of many companies that would benefit from having CTOs who did actually contribute source code.