<p>A CIO is part of the company leadership. His primary duties is to make policies, create organization (i.e., structure the company, at least the part that reports to him), make strategic decisions etc. In a large company, many technical people report directly or indirectly to the CIO; if there are technical problems to solve, he is supposed to hire people to solve those problems, or - more likely -
have his direct reports hire those people.</p>

<p>I would be <em>very</em> wary if a CIO starts fixing technical problems himself. This probably would mean that he has trouble delegating, or trusting his employees.</p>

<p>There may be a phase in a very small company (like 5-10) where you might have some kind of senior technical person who starts to grow into the CIO role. But that should certainly be a path that develops itself (often it is quite obvious who is a good fit for that role and who isn't), and nothing where you start pondering whether you want to become CIO or not out of the blue. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-10T09:10:24.073Z
2017-12-10T09:10:24.073Z
AnoE
<p>What I have heard of Chiefs is the following:</p>

<p><strong>Pros</strong>:</p>

<ol>
<li>Bigger influence of decisions that will be made</li>
</ol>

<p><strong>Cons</strong>:</p>

<ol>
<li>Less time to be technical. Most of the chiefs told me that they only can spend a maximum of 10% of their time to be technical.</li>
</ol>

<p>What are other pros and cons of being one of the Chiefs or are some chiefs, e.g. CTO, CIO, COO spending more time to fix technical problems by themselves?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-12T13:06:33.413Z
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this belonsg to [workplace.se] or some other management related site, but that's loosely related to devops.
Tensibai
<culture>
What are Pros and Cons of being a CIO?
030
# What are Pros and Cons of being a CIO?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-12-09)

What I have heard of Chiefs is the following:

**Pros**:

1. Bigger influence of decisions that will be made

**Cons**:

1. Less time to be technical. Most of the chiefs told me that they only can spend a maximum of 10% of their time to be technical.

What are other pros and cons of being one of the Chiefs or are some chiefs, e.g. CTO, CIO, COO spending more time to fix technical problems by themselves?

**Tags:** culture

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this belonsg to [workplace.se] or some other management related site, but that's loosely related to devops.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2017-12-10. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

A CIO is part of the company leadership. His primary duties is to make policies, create organization (i.e., structure the company, at least the part that reports to him), make strategic decisions etc. In a large company, many technical people report directly or indirectly to the CIO; if there are technical problems to solve, he is supposed to hire people to solve those problems, or - more likely -
have his direct reports hire those people.

I would be *very* wary if a CIO starts fixing technical problems himself. This probably would mean that he has trouble delegating, or trusting his employees.

There may be a phase in a very small company (like 5-10) where you might have some kind of senior technical person who starts to grow into the CIO role. But that should certainly be a path that develops itself (often it is quite obvious who is a good fit for that role and who isn't), and nothing where you start pondering whether you want to become CIO or not out of the blue.


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