If you have decided your goal is to become a CTO, the next question is how do you make progress towards that goal? To direct your career to become a CTO, you need to commit to the goal, and put a plan in place to achieve that goal.
In this post I will provide you a data driven plan, using the Amazon Working Backwards approach.
To recap, there are 5 primary requirements you need to satisfy to become a CTO, a) a large body of work, b) great written and spoken communication skills, c) ability to attract high quality talent, d) build trust with others and e) spot technical trends quickly.
The plan itself comprises of elements you have to do each week, month and year. I have outlined several steps you might have to complete in each of the 5 areas.
You can take as long as you wish (2-3 years or 12-15 years), but being consistent and disciplined helps.
Body of work
Most items on this list will be “must have”. Either you have to show where you did these, or the products and solutions you built have to have the level and sophistication of success.
| Area of work | Experience |
| Understand and outline customer problems | Have you been able to talk to and solve specific customer problems and show that you can articulate the problems in good detail |
| Define use cases | Outline what use cases are defined by the customer problems |
| Architect the solution | Display the ability to architect the solution using components |
| Choose the right stack | Asses the technical details of the problem to pick the right stack to build the solution |
| Develop MVP / early version | Either build it yourself, use no code / low code tools, get it developed or outsource it |
| Iterate and scale the solution | Show that you can go beyond the initial MVP |
| Deliver multiple versions | Show that you can build multiple versions and ship products through the stages of the product |
Communication
Most of the items in communication need not be external (For e.g. you dont need to have a YouTube video or Twitter profile) but they help if you can get inbound inquires for CTO positions that are not published.
| Area of work | Experience |
| Requirements outline | Proof of documents that outline detailed requirements Tip: Most CTOs I know use a blog or SlideShare to showcase this |
| Architecture | Showcase complex architecture tradeoffs that were made. Tip: If you can showcase a few on SlideShare it would be great |
| Blog | Maintain and drive content for an engineering blog with examples of your work, etc. |
| Speaking | Showcase ability to connect with developers and other technical teams by speaking at conferences, etc. |
| Visual | Show your ability to communicate at scale Tip: Record a few YouTube videos (one or two a month will suffice) |
| Engagement | Engage with thought leaders on platforms such as Twitter (don’t need to tweet daily, but some engagement is preferred) |
Talent
Most of these items will be asked in interviews and also checked on during references.
| Area of work | Experience |
| Hire talent | Ability to hire first set of developers, who are willing to work on problems without clear definition |
| Develop talent | Show that you can groom and develop talent over time. Tip: Most CTOs I know have 3-4 public recommendations on LinkedIn of people who have worked for them |
| Discern potential | Showcase the ability to hire early interns / young members who can be groomed over time |
| Performance Manage | Display the experience to manage individual performances by either coaching or dismissal |
| Coach and Mentor | Show how you can help team members grow in their roles and careers |
| Motivation | Help team members achieve potential by helping them see the bigger picture, convince them to achieve greatness |
Trust
Most of the items in trust are in display during interview questions.
| Area of work | Experience |
| Goal outline | Show how you can collaborate with other senior leaders to set goals that the team can align on |
| Metrics definition | Proof that you can align to metrics, drive metric definition, and outcomes using scalable processes |
| Goal alignment | Explain how you worked with other leaders to help achieve corporate goals |
| Active listening | Examples of how you changed your mind, based on data or otherwise. |
| Intellectual honesty | Display examples of architecture decisions that were made from your “gut” – how do you make decisions? |
| Respect | How you treat others especially those who are junior and not yet tenured |
Trends
Most of these items will be based on opinions of other people’s view of you – analysts you interact with, customers you talked to, others you interviewed. The best way to showcase these is to have an opinion and outline it – in any way you are comfortable doing so.
| Area of work | Experience |
| Process | Show how you have streamlined development, testing, release and operational processes and are adopting new trends (Agile, Scrum, etc.) |
| Technology | Perspectives on open source tools, latest technology trends (Containers, Service Hub, Serverless for e.g. in 2020) |
| Tools | What tooling and infrastructure trends can you outline to help you develop faster and with fewer resources |
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