The CTO

I have written briefly about the Chief Technical Officer. I have so much material on this guy that I don't know where to start. Of course, much like the CTO himself, most of my thoughts are completely random and chaotic.

In order to help me organize my thoughts, I present here a brief overview of the CTO's role in the development of the Mecca's core technology.

Imagine an elderly Indian gentleman (or not), shuffling around in his cork soled sandals. The true air of professionalism. One might be tempted to assume that he is one of those genius-type savants. One might even believe it when hearing some of the ideas this guy came up with. One would discover the folly of this assumption if one actually released the parking brake on one's brain.

Where to start?

Imagine that you want to build a machine that is basically the same as what everybody else is building. That is, your intellectual property isn't in the machine, but the stuff that goes in the machine. Suppose now that EVERYBODY was doing it the same way. Yeah, that way has patents, but if EVERYBODY else is doing it like that, either the patent holder is happy to grant a license, or they don't enforce their patents. Your engineers are also telling you that it is the most sensible way to do things. What would you do? You would come up with a way around the patent that multiplies the complexity of the device by a factor of ten. Not only does this increase the cost enormously, but gives the thing about two dozen additional (and unnecessary) new failure modes.

Your engineers grudgingly go along with you and design a device to do it your way. Just in case, you spend about $10,000 dollars for a "backup" that has a two month lead time, is four times the size, and is not really appropriate for the job. By the time it arrives, your engineers have devised a $1000 implementation for your stupid design concept and use your $10,000 toy as a door stop. They don't even take it out of the box. Bastards!

What to do? You don't want to waste that money, and you can't send it back, so you create some stupid side project and hire a company to turn this unused "insurance" into an even larger doorstop.

Back to the original design. Your engineers tell you that your design concept won't work, because it will require you to find a glue that will hold 20PSI of pressure, under relatively high temperatures, as well as being chemically inert, non-fluorescent and transparent. Your response is "the glue will hold". Your VP of engineering (the Mad Man from Down South) writes a long email to you, and CC's Swiper, telling you what a stupid design concept this is. He distributes hard copies of this email at virtually every meeting.

You need to take action. You come up with another stupid idea. Two wrongs make a right? One of your engineers turns this stupid idea into something viable. He says that it's a horrible solution. The performance is crap, it's not usable, and he's only done this to get the company out of the hole. That is, the alpha test site that has lost their bench to a stinking turd for over four months.

Your solution: You threaten to outsource your engineering team to a contract manufacturer in a third world country.

Your engineers seek a way to vent their frustrations, such as starting a blog called "The Silicon Valley Way."

But wait, there's more... Unfortunately, much more.