CTO Career Path And Why You Need To Hug A Mentor
The CTO role comes with many responsibilities and not a little isolation.
And what got you there … talent, motivation, luck, focus, vision, timing … might not solve that sense of being alone with the decisions and impact of your role. Which is where the mentor can step in.
This article from co-founder Jason Noble, is a personal perspective about the traditional career path and when and where a mentor can step in to help guide you through the tough times.
We wrote an earlier article looking at traditional career paths for the CTO, particularly with early stage and fast growth companies .
I wanted to add a blog post that included a more personal reflection and, where and why mentors can provide an important shoulder to lean on.
Getting into technology has led to an exciting career journey for me, not least because the unceasing momentum of technology led innovation means you are guaranteed to be working with ever changing parameters and something new lurks around every corner.
Whilst the technology journey for aspiring CTOs often starts by messing around at home with a PC, Mac or phone, trying to understand how the operating system works and whether it can be tweaked, I was learning many years before the arrival of smartphones!
I started experimenting with technologies of the day and learning simple programming languages, in my day it was BASIC. Kids today are starting with Scratch (or Lego equivalent) and moving into Python.
If it’s become a passion then you formalise and enhance these skills within school, university, college or even these days, online courses, but key throughout this phase is experimentation. Building your knowledge base exponentially becomes the foundation and springboard, for later success.
Once that teenage enthusiast moves into employment as a programmer, then you start to specialise with a certain language or framework.
With the dizzying pace of technological change, a narrow focus can quickly make you a specialist as the latest and greatest language/framework comes along and with experience in different projects, comes the move into becoming a senior developer and management duties, as junior developers might be nesting within your team and needing your guidance.
I reflect back and see my own incremental improvements in learning, expertise and management. Much of it taking place before everything was online.
Seems like an ancient world today but in “them days”, there were loads of books and, if you were a Microsoft shop, you could subscribe to MSDN which sent CDs every month with mountains of documentation. One very popular job we use to give interns (Ed: are you sure?) was sorting out a year’s worth of disks, retaining the latest versions, whilst converting the rest into coffee mats.
Now we have forums, online courses, examples, tutorials, competitions… a myriad of different ways and channels for learning and building language and framework skills.
Ultimately though, the process has retained one common thread … it’s only by doing, that you really learn.
The skill of the developer is not the building of an application per se, but knowing what parts of the development framework actually work and what is the best to implement in reality.
Junior Management Steps
From here, you start running the stand-ups meetings, fitting in with the rest of the development teams and/or helping in other areas of the development project.
Alongside these early management duties, your technical skills are expanding. You start to move between companies for better pay and more interesting projects, whilst constantly validating your skills in different environments.
Alongside learning the technical nut and bolts, you start surrounding yourself with impressive and inspiring individuals from whom you absorb as much learning as possible.
Leaders, mentors, books and articles advise on how to run the development build and provide reassurance about the mistakes that can happen, and that can be fixed relatively easily.
Senior Management Steps
The next step can be towards the CTO hot seat, though it doesn’t suit everyone and many people choose Head of Development/VP of engineering, where they stay closer to the everyday tech.
That’s not the case as CTO, where the role moves away from day-to-day tech issues and towards strategy, management, finance and futurology.
Many roads lead to being a CTO …. Apply for a role, be promoted internally or sometimes with fast growth companies, accidentally fall into the role as the most senior developer.
The latter scenario is very familiar to early stage and fast growth companies where the CTO has often got the role, almost by default and where you’re not actually sure what is required.
That’s ok because you have had peer support throughout your career and there is loads of information online, right?
Wrong.
Reality in the start up world is there’s a shortage of CTOs — see Quora and “Where can I find a CTO?” or visit sites WorkInStartups where founder CTO roles are aplenty.
A CTO provides technical visionary and strategy for a company which means that they no longer are just working in the tech/development world with its own language and foibles.
Now the CTO has to communicate effectively to the business and the outside world as well as understand a company’s strategy to then to define the technical roadmap.
Along with this, the CTO has to manage their team as well as attending board meetings probably once a month. This is quite a lot to take on board when they have had little training for the role.
Great mentors = Improved CTOs
One way to solve this lack of experience is by having a mentor.
A mentor is firstly someone whom you can have confidential conversations with, as well as guide and bounce ideas off. They’re not generally available for skill top ups or hands on input, but definitely someone to help with iron out career, company or management concerns.
Rules of mentoring?
You are the director, so avoid looking to them for making decisions for your organisation. They will not have in-depth knowledge of your business and team that you have, so there is a limit to what they can provide.. Bounce ideas off them and ask how they would go about solving a problem. It should give you a different perspective.
One advantage of a mentor is that there network is likely to be larger than yours (just because they have been at it longer) and may know someone to help out on a problem. They will be able to help with HR but do check with your HR department for the latest processes.
That leaves interacting with the rest of the business and soft skills. A mentor may be able to tell you how they have gone about it and you should take on-board their approach along with others to craft it your own style. At some point, your mentors job will be done and you will be up to speed enough to travel your own road.
After that you should look to use the techniques to mentor your team whether that is in technical, project management, business or soft skills as that will be your path to becoming a CTO mentor for the next generation coming through.
Often a mentor plays a very simple role, as someone for the CTO to lean on and help not feel too isolated.
Being a CTO (or indeed any c-suite role) is a tough, challenging and occasionally isolated role but for their career guidance and support, the mentor can play a crucial supporting role.
Mentors have played an active role in my career and helped me get where I am today.
It definitely helps not being afraid to ask for advice.
I always keep an open mind about how much or little they can add but whilst I’ve not always agreed with the advice given, building a relationship of trust with my mentors means I know it’s been given with the best intentions.
Whether that advice is taken or not, I know that the times when I didn’t have a mentor to help bounce ideas off, was the time it took me significantly longer to get to the right decision.
It’s why I’m a huge advocate for mentors and why I launched a mentoring arm to CTO Academy.
CTO Academy : Management skills training and mentoring for tech leaders
and developers around the world