He mentions he has nobody reporting to him. That sounds like he’s really a staff engineer with a vanity CTO title, plus a lot of sway in strategic decision making.

It’s not a guaranteed recipe for disaster, but it depends critically on his relationship with whoever actually manages the engineering org. If they don’t pull in the same direction, things go south very quickly and you end up with a little civil war.

Either way it’s a red flag and I wouldn’t work there. Another red flag is that he wrote this blog post at all. Given how clearly negative the reaction to it was going to be, it’s a strong signal he doesn’t really think things through and has a ego wrapped up in his “coding” prowess and ability to circumvent process. People mention Woz as an example of a technical co-founder in a non-management role, but he is a humble guy and wouldn’t brag like this.

How big is assembled in terms of headcount? That should resolve most of the questions we are raising.

FWIW Carmack did this as CTO of Oculus [0]. Another configuration I've seen is for the CTO to have like 1 direct (VP Eng) who does actual eng managing. You could argue it's a staff engineer role but I've never seen staff engineers actually get much say over org direction/structure or be empowered to break gridlock like this.

[0]: https://www.uploadvr.com/john-carmacks-app-reviews-series/

Maybe. If he’s a technical founder though what other position would you hold?