Think Like a CTO

I picked up this book recently. I thought it sounded interesting. I've always thought that perhaps at some point I would take on a CTO-type role. Also running my own business, I'm often trying to sell to CTOs. I thought understanding how they think could be valuable.

Administrative Duties

The book was very administrative subjects. There's a lot in the book about interacting with the board, investors, the CEO and the rest of the C suite. There is a healthy discussion on office politics. It also talks audits and doing due diligence if involved in a buyout (from either side). Of course, it talks about hiring and firing. The book also covers the typical documentation, contracting, and just general housekeeping

Technical Aspects

There's also obviously a lot of technical aspects to being CTO. The book covers security and general development practices. It covers things like onboarding and building and managing the skills on your team. It talks a lot about disaster recovery and managing data. There is a lot of information on vision, planning and staying on top of the latest technology trends. There is a whole lot of information on choosing a technology stack. There is a lengthy section on avoiding vendor lock-in that gave me some pause, particularly since I've built my business around NI and its software stack.

Overall Impression

It's a great book. I highly recommend it. It did give me some insight into how CTOs think which will hopefully help me better sell my consulting services. I'm not sure it did a great job at selling me on my becoming a CTO. There are a lot of parts to being a CTO that I would be pretty good at and there's also a lot of administrative work that goes along with it - more than I would have thought. I'm not sure all of that is my cup of tea. I tend to prefer more technical work, so maybe Agile Coach is a better path for me. We'll see what happens. I'm not ruling anything out yet.