Since January, after temporarily pausing my freelancing career, I have a accepted the challenge of becoming the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of a startup.
Feels like climbing a mountain to the top and seeing another one in your field of view, damn.
What’s a CTO?
Tough to say. It depends.
I think it is a shapeshifting key role that mixes both technical and managerial responsibilities. The level of those responsibilities heavily depends on the industry you are in and the current state of the company.
In general I would say that the main goal is ensuring that technology choices are aligned with the business goals, that company processes and procedures support the Developer Experience (DX), ensuring the best quality of life for my colleagues but also a great product/service delivered to clients.
By the way, when I say “company state” I mean the current form/type of the company: startup, scaleup, unicorn, corporate, etc. but let me also explain what I mean with the most classical engineering response ever: “it depends”.
Startup
In my view, the CTO of a startup has, in addition to the role responsibilities, an additional focus towards a pure development/engineering role: more often than not a CTO is developing the PoC (Proof of Concept) and the MVP (Minimum Viable Product), managing further feature development in detail and many other non-strictly CTO-ish tasks.
You should be in touch with different stakeholders, having a deep understand of their needs and being able to translate things from business talk to tech talk and viceversa.
Scaling up
When the company scales, I imagine that everything feels like moving more on the management side and the more you scale up to the top the more it becomes a “political” figure, or at least less hands-on. You focus more on budgeting, handling vendors/partners and surely structuring a hiring process and career framework that makes sense.
In my view I would still like to get my hands “dirty” with some coding/architecture diagram and in general with things that help building a platform to improve the overall workflow.
Turning corporate
I am not sure I have got enough data to guess this but I do not think I would be happy with such a role in a corporation since, from time to time, I still love to get my hands dirty and solve complex technology issues. I would probably feel caged in a pure management and political role that does not belong to me.
Are you an experienced CTO?
Hell no! I don’t really know what I’m doing. Or maybe I’m just trying to set the expectation bar very low so I cannot disappoint anyone, myself included.
To be honest, I have got some experience as fractional CTO from when I was freelancing, I gained a lot of leadership skills from the different managers I had during my engineering years (some just taught me what you are NOT supposed to do but that is still valuable) and, most of all, I really enjoy to challenge myself to do the impossible.
As a fresh CTO, I think it is natural to feel a mix of excitement and anxiety as one takes on this new role. It is a crucial one, responsible for leading the technical direction of a whole organization and that is definitely something big.
Do I feel ready?
If “ready” means hyped-up to take the big step, fail, learn from my mistakes and improve: HELL YEAH.
If instead you mean “ready” as in “know-it-all” kind of behaviour, absolutely not.
My resolutions
With this new year upon us, now is the perfect time to set some resolutions that will help and give me some guidance on the next steps to take.
- Focus on continuous learning: Technology is constantly evolving, and as CTO, I think it is important to stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices. I will make a commitment to continuously learning and growing, whether that means taking online courses, attending conferences, or simply keeping up with industry news.
I love keeping a tech radar on cloud technologies I discover and monitor, so maybe I can turn it into a newsletter.
What do you think? - Build strong relationships with my team: As CTO, I will be working closely with both the tech team and the management. I feel it is so important to build strong relationships with them, as it will help foster collaboration and drive success. I will make an effort to get to know my team members on a personal level, and be open and approachable as a leader. They are amazing people, with different backgrounds, passions and aspirations, it will be a pleasure to share part of our time together.
Maybe I will try to schedule some 1:1 super informal meetings, just to chit chat a bit! - Communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders: The CTO role involves a lot of communication with non-technical stakeholders, such as executives, sales/marketing teams, legal professionals and customers. I will try to improve my communication skills and work on translating technical concepts into language that non-technical audiences can understand.
Any reading commendations? Maybe there are books somewhere that could be really helpful to fulfill such task. - Prioritize diversity and inclusion: They say tech industry has a reputation for being lacking in diversity, and it is important to work towards changing that. As CTO, I make a commitment to building a diverse and inclusive team, and I will strive to create a culture that values and supports all team members.
I think this is not to be underestimated but it is more manageable in the early stage since the team is not huge for the moment. Any tip that you think I should take into consideration? - Protect the team well-being: I will promote a healthy work-life balance by encouraging breaks, vacation time, flexibility and disconnection. Fostering a positive work culture and environment is vital and I will make sure that self-care is a priority for everyone in the company. Managing workloads will be a consistent part of my daily routine: allocating people to the right (amount of) tasks is my priority along with ensuring that every concern is addressed, may it be from the team or stakeholders. I have always advocated for the well-being of employees and I will make everything in my power to take steps towards this direction, no matter what.
- Embrace innovation: As CTO, I will have a unique opportunity to drive innovation within the organization. I will stay open to new ideas and explore new technologies that could benefit our business, clients and why not: the world. I should think big, not be tied to the past, stay open to inputs and always be looking forward.
- Improve my (spoken) English: I’m not speaking English at a native level and I know that is an important skill to develop in the tech world. I must improve it by reading and speaking more, even in non-technical environments. The fact that I’m now an expat will surely help.
Maybe I will also try to join conferences as speaker, I already have some in mind.
In conclusion, being a newbie CTO is both very exciting and very challenging. By setting these resolutions for the year ahead, I hope I can set myself up for success and make a positive impact in my role. Wish me luck!
If you are (or were) in a CTO or similar role - Head of Engineering, VP of Engineering, particularly in a startup environment - feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn with some advices, I bet I can use those.
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Originally published on blog.mb-consulting.dev.