What Should a CTO Really Do? Insights on Leadership, Culture, and Process

Chen Bin, CTO of Yibao, shares his perspective on what a CTO should focus on, illustrating the spectrum of duties from writing code, testing networks, and scripting to higher‑level management and leadership as a company grows.

Beyond day‑to‑day tasks, a CTO must oversee processes, monitoring, standards, technical culture, budgeting, technical image, direction, and strategy, recognizing that technology alone cannot drive success without strong organization.

He emphasizes that CTOs should balance technical involvement with people management, ensuring talent development across development, testing, operations, network, and security roles, and preventing high‑skill but culturally misaligned staff from hindering progress.

Effective assessment of technical staff should focus on intellectual contribution rather than mere hours, using OKRs and timely encouragement such as regular CTO briefings to motivate teams.

Organizational structure matters: flat teams foster innovation, while overly hierarchical models can stifle it. Small, cross‑functional squads (8‑10 members) improve communication and efficiency.

Culture is a CTO responsibility; fostering a technical sub‑culture, introducing new technologies regularly, and encouraging 24‑hour innovation sprints help attract and retain talent.

Technical debt should be treated like financial debt: documented, measured, and planned for repayment as resources allow.

Process maturity is crucial; systems inevitably have failure points, and the goal is to detect and address issues proactively, moving toward automated, metric‑driven operations.

Adopting appropriate management frameworks (e.g., ITIL) and automation reduces manual errors and supports reliable, scalable services.

Yibao Payment, a B‑to‑B payment platform, focuses on high concurrency, scalability, reliability, and stringent security, leveraging container cloud technologies, custom logging and monitoring solutions, and a robust information‑security team that conducts regular penetration testing and compliance (PCI) audits.

In conclusion, a CTO must prioritize people, organization, culture, and processes, using technology as a means to serve business goals.