Do I Need a CTO, or Should I Be the CTO Myself?

That's a great question, one that almost every founder with a technical background has mulled over many times.

This issue actually needs to be looked at from two levels: "the coding engineer" and "the CTO". They are two different species.

Let's use an analogy: building a skyscraper:

The engineer is the most skilled craftsman, knowing how to bind rebar most securely, how to lay bricks most beautifully, and capable of doing the work quickly and excellently with their own hands. Give them a room, and they can build it perfectly for you.
The CTO is more like a combination of Chief Architect + Head Foreman. They need to:
1. Draw blueprints (Tech Stack Selection & Architecture): Before the first pile is driven, they must decide: will this building be steel-framed or brick-concrete? Where will the load-bearing walls go? How will the water, electricity, and gas pipes run? If an extra floor is added later, can the current foundation support it? This corresponds to: What tech stack will we use (Java, Python, Go?)? What database? If user numbers grow from 10,000 to 1,000,000, will the system crash?
2. Assemble the construction crew (Team Management): They need to know where to recruit people – carpenters, masons, or electricians? How to make this group cooperate instead of fighting? How to train new recruits so that junior workers can eventually stand on their own? This corresponds to: building the tech team, defining development processes, managing performance, and fostering an engineering culture.
3. Communicate with clients and sales (External Communication): They must be able to explain in the simplest terms to investors (clients) who know nothing about construction why their building is awesome and why so much money is being spent on a particular brand of cement. When sales (marketing) says, "the client wants a sky garden," they need to assess if it's feasible and at what cost. This corresponds to: explaining complex technical issues to the board, investors, and partners, and supporting business decisions from a technical perspective.
4. Read the 'feng shui' (Technical Vision): They need to keep an eye on industry trends, knowing that "prefabricated construction" is a new popular approach, and consider whether their building should adopt it, what the benefits are, and what the risks. This corresponds to: monitoring cutting-edge technologies, determining which ones will be useful for the company's future, and planning ahead.

So, to figure out if you are a CTO, you can ask yourself a few questions:

What do you enjoy more? Does spending a day conquering a technical challenge and writing elegant code give you more satisfaction? Or does spending a day interviewing 5 candidates, arguing with a product manager, and then planning the next quarter's technical direction give you more satisfaction?
Do 'people' annoy you? Leading a team, managing performance, resolving team conflicts, endless meetings... Are you passionate about these things, or do you feel they "get in the way of my coding"?
Can you 'translate'? Can you explain the awesome things you've built in a way your grandmother could understand? When an investor asks, "What's your technical moat?" can you make them feel you're brilliant in 3 minutes, without using a bunch of jargon they don't understand?
How far do you look ahead? Are you more concerned with the features launching next week, or with what technical level your company needs to reach next year to support a threefold increase in business?

The conclusion is clear:

In the early stages of a company (e.g., just you or two or three technical co-founders): Don't get hung up on titles. You are the CTO, the lead engineer, and a frontline coder. Your primary task is to "get the building built" – to survive first. At this stage, 90% of a CTO's work is coding.
When the company starts to grow and needs to recruit more engineers (e.g., more than 3-5): That "soul-searching question" arises.
- If you find that you enjoy, or at least don't mind and are willing to learn about "drawing blueprints, leading teams, and translating," then congratulations, you are transitioning from a top engineer to a CTO.
- If the thought of these things gives you a headache, and you just want to quietly write code, then what you might need isn't a CTO title, but a "technical co-founder" or "CTO" who can handle these tasks for you. You can absolutely serve as a "Chief Scientist" or "Chief Architect," continuing to do what you're best at and most passionate about. This is equally crucial and immensely valuable to the company.

To put it plainly, don't be held hostage by the "CTO" halo. The most crucial thing is to be honest with yourself and find the position where you can maximize your value. A miserable CTO contributes far less to the company than a happy Chief Engineer.