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Ask HN: Best Books for CTO

by lnalx on 3/2/21, 5:07 PM with 10 comments

Hi HN,

I don't have a CTO position yet, but it's my career goal.

Have you an excellent book to read about how to be a good CTO?

Thanks

  • by Terretta on 3/2/21, 5:10 PM

    Big business style CTO or Silicon Valley style CTO?

    Startup or enterprise? Technology play or product play? Consumer or commercial? Front end or platform or infrastructure?

    Regardless, you need a framework for thinking about technology and the jobs to be done, no matter which dimension you’re interested in.

    This is the ticket:

        Technology Strategy Patterns
    by Eben Hewitt
    October 2018
    Technologists who want their ideas heard, understood, and funded are often told to speak the language of business—without really knowing what that is. This book’s toolkit provides architects, product managers, technology managers, and executives with a shared language—in the form of repeatable, practical patterns and templates—to produce great technology strategies.

    Author Eben Hewitt developed 39 patterns over the course of a decade in his work as CTO, CIO, and chief architect for several global tech companies. With these proven tools, you can define, create, elaborate, refine, and communicate your architecture goals, plans, and approach in a way that executives can readily understand, approve, and execute.

    https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/technology-strategy-pat...

    https://smile.amazon.com/Technology-Strategy-Patterns-Archit...

    With that in mind, you can then absorb any other book recommendations that may come from this thread, with a solid context and framing in which to map and understand them.

  • by bwh2 on 3/2/21, 6:09 PM

    I have a collection of books for CTOs on my website that you might enjoy: https://www.briansnotes.io/audience/cto/

    The Manager's Path is another I highly recommend. That book provides the most detail I've seen about the career path to CTO and changing expectations along the way.

  • by epc on 3/2/21, 5:15 PM

    This was just posted recently: https://github.com/kuchin/awesome-cto

  • by Jugurtha on 3/4/21, 10:17 AM

    Not a book, but here's a lengthy reply[0] to a thread that contains links to other replies to similar threads. You may skip the first part and go directly to the links at the bottom, as the first paragraphs addressed what lead to the learning and taking over without a transition period. The links are more for technical roles across the spectrum (individual contributor -- CXO). They explain how to leverage time, gain skills, align with a team, communicate with stakeholders at different technical depths and abstraction levels, institutionalize knowledge, build product, etc.

    - [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26182988

  • by poushkar on 3/8/21, 9:53 PM

    I think a lot of books from this list are applicable: https://techleadcompass.com (shameless plug).

  • by qnsi on 3/2/21, 5:12 PM

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24126065

    and there was another thread about resources for CTOs but cant find it

  • by cpach on 3/2/21, 11:04 PM

  • by KingOfCoders on 3/2/21, 6:04 PM

    "The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results"

  • by zn44 on 3/2/21, 8:39 PM

    Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt