I've also had the experience where the CTO was activly coding, 80% of the code base were theirs, and the company was hiring software engineers who could and wanted to fix up their stuff - there was this true luxury problem for this start-up: bad bugs everywhere, but patient and resilient customers. They found 4 willing engineers with good chemistry at first, at least up until they were constantly vetoed by the CTO in their decisions, because the teams best practices conflicted with the CTO-way of "getting things done" - it's a rigid hierachy after all, and not a democracy.