| Great question and one many of my very talented engineering friends express. My suggestions (in no particular order): 1. Title inflation is a thing. I got my first CTO role in my late 20's and this was partially due to hopping on with a very early stage startup that needed tech direction/leadership/IC work. Getting exec roles in your younger years is much harder with larger more established companies. 2. Learn the whole stack. If you are the VPoE/CTO of a smaller company, people expect you to have the answers for everything tech. You pick the servers, infrastructure, code styles, architecture, frameworks, etc. 3. People are everything on a team. Before you are in one of these roles, spend some time understanding challenges people face in companies you work for, across departments. Grab lunches with people, talk to them about work. Some problems can be solved with an hour of coding a script for them. Most are more complicated, but developing this empathy and willingness to understand was crucial for me. 4. Being able to interview and hire well is an undervalued skillset in the tech industry. Involve yourself in those processes early to start understanding it. Remember that as CTO of a small/mid size company you may have final say on all tech hires as well as being the one who determines when positions are posted. 5. Grow comfortable with the unknown. There is a lot of on-the-job training for your first or second CTO run. Trust that you are smart and deserve where you are. You can figure this out. |