Tentative Jubilation!

[swestrup]

I got back from my job interview about an two hours ago, but its taken me this long to wade through my email (all the missing email from the last few days showed up while I was out), and have a long talk with taxlady about how it went. As to that: I have the Good News and the Bad News.

The Good News is that I've been offered a job as CTO at a new avionics startup, and will have a starting salary double that of my last job!!!

The Bad News is that the company doesn't exist yet; it doesn't even have a name. The money to pay me with is all virtual as well. The guy who hired me is scrambling to find people and put a team together, while his investors are doing various bits of paperwork that is supposed to make money appear in 2 to 3 weeks.

Sooo, its looking like its a really good job that just doesn't happen to exist quite yet. For now, I'm CTO of a unnamed company that I desperatly hope really does materialize in the next 3-6 weeks, and starts paying me. When that first paycheque clears, I'll will do a Gonzo Happy Dance, but for now, I can't help but think it all seems too good to possibly be true!

Comments

[swestrup]

Basic Business Theory:

A corporation (at least in North America) is run as a two tier system, with the top tier of control being the Board of Directors which is responsible to the shareholders and has members elected from the major shareholders. The Board consists of the Chairman (who governs the board), the Outside Directors (people not working for the company, and therefor expected to be unbiased) and the Inside Directors (folks from inside the company who are expected to know what's going on. These are usually the president and vice-presidents of the company. President and vice-president are, by the way, legal terms for the folks responsible for certain aspects of the company and who are named in the incorporation documents).

The idea is that the Directors are responsible for the long term strategic planning of the company and issue Directives to the Executive Officers, which form the second tier. The Executive Officers are hired by the Board to actually run the company and try to implement the directives. The set of Executive Officers changes depending on the business of the company but usually includes the CEO (Chief Executive Officer -- The Big Boss), the COO (Chief Operations Officer -- in charge of marketing, sales, production, and personnel) and the CFO (Chief Financial Officer -- in charge of all money matters).

In practice, things are usually not so clear cut. In the typical case of an entrepreneur who has managed to get some investors together and is forming a corporation (as has happened in my situation), the entrepreneur becomes both the President and CEO and is usually (but not always) Chairman of the board. The Outside Directors are made up of the Investors and their best friends and the Inside Directors are made up from the CEO, COO, CFO and any other Executive Officers.

During the Internet Bubble that started in 1998, many companies formed that were so dependant on surviving in a fast-paced technical environment that for the first time the set of Executive Officers was extended to acknowledge this. As a result two new terms showed up: CIO (Chief Information Officer) and CTO (Chief Technical Officer). Because they are brand-new terms these don't have as clear cut jobs as other Executive Officers, but usually the CIO is the head system administrator for all internal information infrastructure, in charge of day-to-day computer maintenance and upgrades and data security. The CIO often reports to the CTO, who is in charge of all technological decisions in the company, such as how the products are expected to interoperate, which new technologies to use, which to avoid and stuff like that.

Because this company is starting small, the CTO and CIO jobs are going to be merged at first, but as the company grows the CIO job will be split out and someone hired to take care of that.

So, as CTO I'll have the last say in all things technological, and I'll most likely be named to the Board of Directors. Like taxlady says, I'll be Top Geek :-)