One of my biggest mistakes ever was adding “John” as my co-founder and VP Engineering/CTO. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that John wasn’t that great of an engineer, and he failed as our CTO because his engineering skills weren’t that good.
John’s engineering skills were as good as I thought they’d be, maybe better than I’d thought they’d be. John came highly recommended from one my other co-founder, “Jim”.
Jim and I had worked at Maxim Integrated Products together, and Jim had worked with John. And, even though I had never worked with John, it was easy for me to do reference checks on him.
“Genius Engineer!”
“John’s a guru1”
“You got him! Wow!”
That’s what came back from the people that knew John. And, they weren’t wrong. John was a brilliant engineer, yet he failed completely as our CTO.
Hiring a great engineer does NOT mean you’ve hired a great VP Engineering/CTO.
Let’s dissect why John, a guru level, brilliant engineer, failed as our CTO. John had the basics of the role down.
John could recruit high quality engineers to join our company. That’s critical because you’re going to need high quality engineers to build…
