Maybe it's a small company / tech team, but I have to wonder if you are experiencing these feelings because as CTO, your time as a developer is really in the past. What I mean here is - sure, in some companies the CTO is still a hands-on-keyboard role, but over time, your role as a hands-on developer should begin to diminish and your responsibility becomes to delegate those duties to people in your organization you trust. Your responsibilities and skill set move away from low-level technical. If that upsets you, then I'd question perhaps you'd be happier in an individual contributor role and not in a Cx0 / managerial role. That isn't to say that a CTO role isn't technical, but that it is operating at a different level.