Ask HN: I'm an SRE. What's My Path to CTO?

4 points by orangepenguin 9y ago ↗ HN

I've worked in IT operations for around 5 years and currently work as a Site Reliability Engineer for a small company (120 people). I have a degree in Business Administration, but never really used it. I love technical work and feel that I'm a little above average as far as understanding technical concepts and applying them. I feel that I have broad vision for long-term improvements.

Now I'm looking toward the future (10 years out) and trying to determine which path to pursue. The CTO route seems rather appealing, but I don't know enough about it. I'm interested in continuing to work for small businesses (100 - 500 employees).

- Do I need more formal education? - Do I need more well rounded experience? (e.g. development, sales, etc). - What can I do today and tomorrow to move my career in the "C-level" direction? - What responsibilities and challenges does a CTO have that I might be overlooking when considering this path? - Has anyone here followed such a path? (from IT operations to CTO)

Thanks in advance!

1 comment

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ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago ↗

The internal path is probably winding and not guaranteed. Also if you're good at your job as SRE you won't likely become the CTO, you're too valuable as SRE. The people I've seen do it move around or leave to start their own thing, appoint themselves CTO or CEO, if the business succeeds, they sell the business and then can join some place next time as CTO because they've clearly already been one. If the business fails same thing.