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Your First Engineering Hire Shouldn’t Be a CTO

March 20, 2026 / Jim McMullen / Leave a comment

When I joined a healthcare data SaaS company as their first senior technical hire, nobody called me the CTO. The CEO needed someone who could build the product, and that's what I did. I reported directly to him, I wrote code, I designed the database, I directed a small, contracted engineering team, and I started … Continue reading Your First Engineering Hire Shouldn’t Be a CTO

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