Ex-CTO here. A CTO doesn't have to be a people manager. It certainly makes it easier to staff pet projects if you have direct reports (rather than having to convince a VP Engineering to give you resources). But just know that many CTOs (especially co-founder CTOs) focus on technical vision & strategy, being the engineering representative in the C-Suite and vice versa, overseeing architecture and innovation, and perhaps even write code. As the CTO you should be able to decide how many meetings you need to be in, and for that matter you could set policies that eliminate pointless meetings across the board.
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Ex-CTO here. A CTO doesn't have to be a people manager. It certainly makes it easier to staff pet projects if you have direct reports (rather than having to convince a VP Engineering to give you resources). But just know that many CTOs (especially co-founder CTOs) focus on technical vision & strategy, being the engineering representative in the C-Suite and vice versa, overseeing architecture and innovation, and perhaps even write code. As the CTO you should be able to decide how many meetings you need to be in, and for that matter you could set policies that eliminate pointless meetings across the board.