Programming is a requirement. But there’s more to being a chief techie. EMS FORSTER PRODUCTIONS / Getty
Anselm Bauer-Wohlleb programs at the weekend. He loves it, it’s his hobby. During the week, however, he hardly gets to do it, his job doesn’t allow it: Anselm Bauer-Wohlleb is CTO at Alasco, a Munich start-up that builds software for the real estate industry.
This clears up a misunderstanding right from the start and expectation management is practiced: A Chief Technical Officer, or CTO for short, is not the senior programmer of a startup. He is the supreme of all techies, developers and programmers. But he usually does not program. He is busy with other tasks.
The tasks of a CTO
He spends a significant part of his time with Strategy, reports Bauer-Wohlleb. On the one hand, there is the young company’s annual strategy, which he then calculates into a quarterly strategy for his tech division. Then it’s about the “technical architecture“, which is necessary to achieve the goals set therein. Bauer-Wohlleb also spends a large part of his week with him Recruiting, with interviews and actively approaching good people, he says. He has his 45 engineers for building and programming software.