Intro

There has been an increase in the popularity of the CPTO role in recent years.

If you’re not familiar with it yet, CPTO stands for Chief Product and Technology Officer. This is a role where an executive is in charge of both the product and tech departments, combining both together.

I’ve been hearing two specific questions quite a lot recently. These questions are:

• Should a company create and hire a CPTO?

• Should an engineer or engineering leader aspire to become a CPTO?

Luckily for us, we have Yue Zhao with us today as a guest author. She is a Chief Product and Technology Officer turned Coach who helps women and minority leaders break through to the C-suite.

Yue spent 15+ years as a product executive in Silicon Valley. She was the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Fuzzy Pet Health, PM manager at Meta and Instagram, and first PM at Thumbtack.

She is also a fellow course instructor on Maven and writes a newsletter called The Uncommon Executive.

She’ll answer the above two questions in today’s article!

This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:

- A brief history of the top technology roles
- Rise of the Chief Product & Technology Officer role
🔒 Should a company create and hire a Chief Product & Technology Officer?
🔒 However, having a CPTO also comes with some limitations to consider
🔒 So, here is my take based on my experience
🔒 My advice if you wish to become either CTO, CPO or CPTO

Let’s go straight into it. Yue, over to you!

A brief history of the top technology roles

1980 - 1990

Business needs have driven the evolution of the technology executive’s roles since the 1980’s. In the 1980s, most organizations had an Information Technology (IT) department reporting to a CFO or COO.

These IT departments were responsible for bringing data processing and mainframe computers into organizations and implementing the first iterations of enterprise software.

1990 - 2000

Then, in the 1990s, computer software became more integral to the business, and companies like GE and American Airlines were the first to establish the role of a Chief Information Officer (CIO).

2000 - 2010

In the 2000’s with the rise of technology-first organizations like Oracle, Google, and Facebook, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) role was created to focus on innovation and scale, rather than internal infrastructure and data.

2010 - 2020

Finally, in the early 2010s, Chief Product Officer roles began appearing in technology companies where the digital product and user experience were the main competitive differentiator.

Companies like Airbnb, Spotify, and Uber were some of the first to define a CPO role.

As technology became less a service and more a revenue driver, ultimately becoming the differentiator for some companies in the 2010s, the clout of the C-level technology-based roles followed.

Rise of the Chief Product & Technology Officer role

The Chief Product & Technology Officer role is the newest evolution that has gained popularity in the last few years. This is driven by the need for deep alignment between technology decisions and customer-centricity.

SaaS companies with strong Product-led growth channels (e.g. Slack, Spotify, Intercom, Atlassian) and marketplaces (e.g. Upwork, Nextdoor, Zillow, Eventbrite) have been early adopters of this role.

For these companies, their competitive advantage is based on their ability to align with user needs, create an extremely user-centric product, and scale the solution as quickly as possible.

They’re winner-take-all businesses where maintaining strong alignment with user needs and scaling quickly to millions of users are critical to winning market share.

Should a company create and hire a Chief Product & Technology Officer?

Well, as with any organizational structure, it depends on what the business and team needs to win against competitors.

There are multiple benefits to this role:...