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HIRING

Hire a technology leader on evidence

For CEOs, boards and founders. 4 documents, read in order, each one feeding the next. No membership needed.

CTO vs VP of Engineering

Decide by stage and by the open question, not by the title the last person held.
  • Hire a CTO when the open question is direction: what to build, what to stop, what to bet on.
  • Hire a VP of Engineering when the open question is execution: it ships, with a team that can repeat the result.
  • Past roughly 80 engineers, most companies need both. Naming one person as both usually means neither job is owned.
  • Seed and Series A often need a CTO who can still write and hire the first ten. A VP who ran 300 people with a process already in place often cannot.
01 · Role decision

Builder by stage, with the lines worth cutting

Write it in sections the next document can reuse. Cut any requirement you cannot score.
  • Why the role exists now.
  • Three first-year outcomes, each with a number.
  • Decision rights: what they can stop without a committee.
  • What they inherit: team, vendors, incidents, debt.
  • Cut “10+ years”, a degree, “rockstar”, “passionate”, anything you cannot measure.
02 · Job description

Set the band from the mandate

The role decision and the three outcomes pick the cohort.
  • The number lives on Compensation, with source, period and sample size above it.
  • If that cohort is not published, the page says so.
  • Do not quote a blended “CTO salary”.
03 · CompensationOPEN COMPENSATION

Question bank and committee scorecard

The same questions to every candidate. Scored before the committee meets, so five people read the same evidence.
  • Direction: a bet they made, the alternative they rejected, and what they would repeat.
  • Execution: a baseline, a result, and the date.
  • People: someone they hired and someone they removed, by name in the room, not in this document.
  • Judgement: a decision they got wrong, with a date.
  • Score each area 1–4 before discussion. A missing evidence line is a 1, not a debate.
04 · Interview

Search brief builder. Eight fields, one page, before anyone is approached.

MANDATE3 FIRST-YEAR OUTCOMESCOMPANY CONTEXTAUTHORITYTEAM AND RESOURCESREQUIRED EVIDENCECOMPENSATIONDECISION PROCESS
BUILD MY SEARCH BRIEF

First 90 days, and red flags in references

What the committee should be able to see, and what a reference must contain.
  • Days 1–30. They can name the system, the on-call reality, and the decision they do not yet own.
  • Days 31–60. One outcome from the brief has an owner and a number.
  • Days 61–90. The committee can see what they stopped, not only what they started.
  • In references, listen for a story with a date and a result. Adjectives alone (“strategic”, “hands-on”) are a red flag. So is a refusal to discuss someone they managed out.
First 90 days