Both are valid archetypes; the right one depends on company stage. A hands-on technical CTO is deep in architecture and sometimes code, while a strategic CTO focuses on direction, organization, and external relationships, and delegates execution.
How to think about it
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HANDS-ON (often early stage)
- Writes / reviews critical code, owns architecture directly
- Fastest at making technical bets
- Risk: becomes a bottleneck as the team grows
STRATEGIC (often later stage)
- Sets direction, hires leaders, represents tech externally
- Scales through people, not personal output
- Risk: loses technical credibility if too removed
Concrete example
A seed-stage CTO builds the first version of the product themselves. Three years and 80 engineers later, the same person spends their days on strategy, board relations, and leadership hiring; the codebase is owned by directors and staff engineers.