> So let me put it plainly: the CTO/VPE/Engineering Director candidate should pass your coding interview. In fact, they should excel.
I've interviewed over 300+ CTOs over the last 8 years. I don't think the author is saying this literally, but i'll bite - no the CTO doesn't need to pass your coding interview. CTOs need two capabilities to excel - technical ones and human resources ones. That's it. No need to get any more specific or broad than that because different levels of companies have different needs.
For example, a CTO of a 2-person dev team is also a developer. A CTO of a 500 person engineering team very likely doesn't know that his core infra team just wrote something in Rust and that's totally fine, but they sure as hell should know that they have a core infra team and that they're productive in advancing their core infra.
I've interviewed over 300+ CTOs over the last 8 years. I don't think the author is saying this literally, but i'll bite - no the CTO doesn't need to pass your coding interview. CTOs need two capabilities to excel - technical ones and human resources ones. That's it. No need to get any more specific or broad than that because different levels of companies have different needs.
For example, a CTO of a 2-person dev team is also a developer. A CTO of a 500 person engineering team very likely doesn't know that his core infra team just wrote something in Rust and that's totally fine, but they sure as hell should know that they have a core infra team and that they're productive in advancing their core infra.