How to become a CTO
6 strategies that you can use + my story of how I went from engineer to CTO!
Intro
Are you wondering how can you become a CTO? Well, if you ask 100 CTOs of companies various of different sizes, you 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 article, we will go through different strategies that you can employ in order to increase your chances of becoming one. But before we do that, let’s first recap what CTOs actually do and how the role of the CTO differs based on the size of the company.
CTO is responsible for everything technical
As we noted down already in the article: What does a CTO do (paid article). The CTO is responsible for everything technical. They are the go-to person if something breaks or something is not working as it should be.
CTO is also a strategist and visionary, which means that they are here to create a great technical strategy that is aligned with the business. You can read more about developing a great strategy here: How to develop a great tech strategy (paid article).
I also like to say that a CTO is a business role. Even though a CTO is responsible for everything technical, they should have a good understanding of the business. The alignment between business and tech is crucial.
CTO in a small company compared to a large one is a completely different role
This is important to understand because the skills you need to develop are completely different. In a small company, you are a LOT more hands-on, than in a large company.
Here are the main differences:
Small company (pre product-market fit)
The CTO needs to be a tech lead/team lead and develop the MVP together with the team.
Mid-size company (after product-market fit)
CTO needs to be a good manager and build out the teams to support the growth and business accolades.
Large company
CTO is purely a strategic and business role. Aligning technology with the business vision is what CTOs in this stage should be focusing on the most.
Should you become a CTO?
That’s a really good question to ask yourself and thanks to Markus Sandelin for bringing this up in yesterday's LinkedIn post.
There are not enough CTO jobs out there so that everyone can become one and it’s also important to know that the role is not for everyone. Hopefully reading this article and the article What does a CTO do (paid article) can help.
It’s also very important to note that it’s totally fine to do what you like to do, IC, architect, EM, DevOps, data engineering, QA, etc. I am learning from all of these people every day!
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:
Good CTOs are not born, they are made. All of the skills to become a CTO are learnable and can be acquired through experience.