Have you stepped down as CTO and been happier?
I’m currently the CTO of a fairly rapidly growing startup. I am a decent software developer but not a great engineer. I’ve managed to scale the app pretty successfully until now but I feel like I’m am constantly stressed thinking about the next phase. I handle all things technical while the VP of engineering handles the people and process aspects of the team. Lately I have been thinking about stepping down and letting a better CTO come in and run things in the hope that I will be happier day to day. Have you done something similar to this and if so what was the outcome? Were you happier in your personal life?
This will be wildly context dependent. I stepped down (or perhaps more correctly, out -- I left the company) and was happier as I transitioned to a job I was more suited to. I suspect whether moving out of the CTO role will make you happier depends on how able you are to give up technical/architectural ownership to someone else. In my case, it was easy -- I was done and had no interest in the product anymore. However, if you still care about decisions, I'd imagine you're setting yourself up for a different kind of angst: seeing your replacement do things "the wrong way" and not being able to fix it. Of course, YMMV.