Why You Probably Don't Need a Full-Time CTO

The work I do now as a fractional CTO isn't new. But it's different from consulting in ways that matter. I spent years at EY and Zilker Technology leading technical engagements — architecture direction, team building, platform migrations. Those were full engagements. Temporary, yes, but often 40+ hours a week. I'd make the architecture decisions, but I'd also be neck-deep in backlog grooming, PR reviews, data entry, and playing three roles because the engagement scoped it that way. The high-value work — the decisions, the direction, the "here's how to architect this and why" — would take maybe 10-15 hours a week. The rest was overhead that cost the client more money but wasn't the core focus. I also did work that looked a lot closer to what fractional actually is: technical audits where I'd assess a system in a week and hand back a roadmap. Training drops where I'd come in, walk a team through how to move from Angular 1 to Angular 2, discuss the new paradigm, and leave them to execute.