How To Become a CTO

Are you wondering how you can become a CTO? Well, if we ask 100 CTOs of companies various of different sizes, we will get 100 unique stories. There is really not one and the only way to become one, but there are some common patterns. In this video, we will go through different strategies that you can employ in order to increase your chances of becoming a CTO. So before we get into the specifics, let me just mention that if you're interested in what a CTO does on a daily basis and how different a role is based on the company size, I'll add the link to the video in the description. And you can watch it later. All right, now let's first start with if you should actually become a CTO. That's a really good question to ask yourself because there are not enough CTO jobs out there so that everyone can become one. And it's also really important to know that the role is not for everyone. It's not an easy role because you need to combine tech skills with people, product, and also the business as well. It's great for people that are generalists. Make sure to check out the video I've mentioned before so you can get more insights. It's also very important to note that it's totally fine to do what you like to do. Being the best engineer, architect, engineering manager, data engineer, QA, etc. So if that's what you like to do, it's more than fine to be the best at it as you can. One thing I would add is that good CTOs are not born, they're made. All of the skills to become a CTO are learnable and can be acquired through experience. Now let's go straight into different strategies on how you can become a CTO. As said in the beginning of the video, there is no one way to become a CTO. I'll be sharing 6 main strategies that you can take in order to become a CTO. Let's go to the first Next one, start a company. If you start a company, you either do it alone or with a co-founder or more of them. If you do it alone, then you will need to eventually make a decision. Either you are going to be focusing on tech or you will find someone who is going to do that. In the long run, it's almost impossible to be the CEO plus CTO combined. So if you see yourself more on the business side, then the CEO is the right choice for you. But if you wish to focus more on tech, then you should get a co-founder. Unless you already have experience Working in tech, you will need to learn on the role, especially if the company is growing. You will need to acquire good leadership management skills and understanding how building teams work. This is the route of a lot of uncertainty and continuous learning on the job, but the returns on this may be immense. Even if the company is not successful in the end, with experience you acquired, you can either start a new company or have a good chance to get a good role in some other company. Let's go to the second strategy: become a founding engineer. This is especially for someone who is good at building MVPs. It's not so important that the code is clean or well structured, but speed is very important. If the product has found the fit, you would potentially be a candidate for the CTO role because you already have a good understanding of the product and the codebase. So if that's the case, you should let the founders know as soon as possible, and you need to instill confidence in them about this. If you become the CTO, make sure to prepare for a lot of learning because being a CTO is much different role than being a founding engineer, especially in a high growth company. Let's get to the third strategy: go through the management path. This is the path that I took, and I think it's one of the best ways to become a CTO. If you were previously an engineer and later decide to go on the management path, you have experience both as engineer and a manager, which is extremely helpful as a CTO. You know how to build teams, how to create a good development process, how to communicate, how to give feedback, and also how to inspire and how to empower people. That's how you can become a CTO in any of the companies, no matter the size, because for mid-plus size companies, management skills mandatory for CTOs. You can think of it like this: the more you grow in the management path, the more you become a good fit for midsize or bigger companies as a CTO. One very important thing is that you keep nurturing your tech skills as well. Many times it can happen that managers completely neglect the tech skills and become so outdated that they become less effective. Let's go to the fourth strategy: go through the architecture path. Similar to the management path, the more you grow in the architecture path, the better fit you will be. But the reason is not in tech skills or pure architecture skills. The reason is that you would be leading teams, and the more you grow as an architect, the more people you're influencing in the role as well. Through this path, you would be good for mid-plus size companies, or maybe small size if you're very good in fine details as well. You need to learn all the necessary management skills, how to build teams, and also understand other parts of engineering like QA and data engineering. This might be a good path for you if you like to still stay technical in details and you love to design great systems. But keep in mind that as a CTO of mid-plus size companies, you won't be doing that anymore. Now let's go to the fifth strategy: go through the IC path. The more you grow in the IC path, the better you understand the business side of things. But one thing that you will lack is the lack of management skills. Therefore, you would be good for small size companies, but you will need to learn the management skills for mid-plus size companies. If you see yourself in very fine details being a CTO of a smaller company size might be the one for you. And I would also suggest that you immediately start learning and improving your management skills. Now let's go to the last strategy: become a CTO through other roles, mostly product. I've seen where CTOs come from roles such as DevOps, Head of DevOps, QA, Head of QA, etc. But I've also seen where a CPO or Head of Product transition to either a Chief Technology and Product Officer or pure CTO role. I'm not familiar if CTOs came from other businesses roles such as marketing, sales, growth, finance, or similar. But I think for product it's becoming common, especially if the product person is also very good in tech as well. Do you know of any transitions from other business roles to CTO? I would love to hear about that. I'm curious to hear about your thoughts on different strategies to grow to the CTO role. Make sure to share them in the comments. To learn more, you can subscribe to my newsletter. It's called Engineering Leadership, where I share similar tips and advice on how to be a great engineering leader. There are more than 100,000 people already reading it, and I publish 2 new articles every week. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.