Being a great developer isn't enough to become a CTO

Becoming a CTO! The road is long, the chosen are few.

Yet this is the goal many young developers set for themselves, and I commend them. It's the taste for excellence, the ability to take on responsibility, and the desire to reach a technical level above the rest of their peers, that allows a developer to rise to the higher rank of CTO.

CTOs are the developers who have always prioritized growing their skills. They are people with technical experience, of course, but above all significant human experience, which lets them understand how a team can manage to surpass itself to design, architect, develop, and ship a scalable application.

A CTO isn't just the guardian of the code — they also decide on the architecture, challenge their developers on design problems, and above all define the workflow that allows the team to work in the best conditions to deliver clean code.

"They must be able to challenge priorities to protect their team from rushed requests coming from the business."

Beyond being part of the technical team, the CTO is a member of management who therefore intervenes at a decision-making level alongside leadership. Their role is also to understand the path to follow so their team can respond to the company's strategy. They must therefore have a high level of understanding of the stakes and be able to challenge priorities, in order to protect their team from rushed requests coming from the business. A CTO must also be a good communicator — they must know how to listen to their team, take the time to explain things, and above all know how to recruit, that is, convince profiles, sometimes more experienced than themselves, to join the project.

If you haven't yet acquired the human and managerial skills, don't try to be a CTO — instead, look for a company where the CTO wants to surround themselves with rising profiles. Try to land a lead developer role and check that your CTO will trust you and rely on you to deliver on their missions.

"It's easy to be CTO of yourself."

Watch out — CTO isn't just a title. It's easy to be CTO of yourself, and you must not rush in without thinking and work for the first company that offers you the chance to add this title to your LinkedIn. The adventure would be short-lived, because in reality, you won't have the ability to grow fast enough on the various subjects that make a CTO have a future in their position.