That's why I said 'lesser title for CTO.' They don't necessarily manage a project, so much as act as a leader for channeling communication between management and coders.
This makes sense for very small companies, but maybe not so much for large companies. For instance, a senior developer at Google is miles away from the CTO (or equivalent position). There you've got senior developers, staff developers, senior staff developers, directors of engineering, distinguished engineers, etc.
