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Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#61

Post by xtracto »

rwmj wrote: post #44
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #34

I've been a CTO a couple of times (VMware, startup), I don't think I'm a good one (I am better as an individual contributor, rather than as a manager), but I have one piece of advice for you: ignore books, or use them as secondary source of truth. You should instead TALK to long-time or former CTOs and ask them for advice. You won't find that advice in any book. It's invaluable.

How/where did you find former CTOs to talk to?

The slack community in https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/ has a pretty good number of CTOs and other leaders.

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#62

Post by tailspin2019 »

leandot wrote: post #56

You’ve been chosen to be a CTO, this usually means that you either did well in the company or were hired because of a good track record. So keep doing this + keep things simple, plan ahead, learn from colleagues, share knowledge. Stay humble, confess mistakes, ask for genuine feedback and advice. Books and blogs have a limited anecdotal value (sometimes it is high but the effort is also high). I’ve learned more from…

I mean this is decent advice, but slightly odd given you could easily have plugged your site here AND actually given the OP what they asked for :-)

Maybe it’s some reverse psychology thing. Ok I’ll do it, you evil genius…

https://hackernewsbooks.com

PS CTOs aren’t always chosen, many are self-appointed as founders or co-founders (possibly in this case too).

Chosen implies you’ve been subject to external assessment, self-appointed is a different matter altogether (ie. you may be extremely aware of possible knowledge/experience gaps that you need to quickly fill).

To add my own suggestion, I think High Output Management by Andy Grove is an excellent resource (not just for CTOs)

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#63

Post by WillAdams »

Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ is a classic which shows the dark underbelly of deal-making and press-release creation, and why we can't have nice things if they aren't being made so as to ensure the profit of a dominant player: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup

Contrast it with: https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html

and the early history of VisualBASIC (and wonder how things might have played out had the Mac had a nice development environment out the gate)

and for management interactions see: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#65

Post by Izmaki »

Izmaki wrote: post #33
erikstarck wrote: post #16

The Mythical Man Month and The Phoenix Project.

I've had The Phoenix Project recommended before. Listening to the Audio Book now - hoping it's good.

A couple of hours of listening in here, it feels a lot like "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" - a made-up story about a made-up company with made-up problems that are simple and self-contained enough to have solutions, and where colleagues are able to work together, despite turbulence.

It's hard to relate to, honestly. It's likely that the target audience is just not "me", but I think somebody with very limited experience dealing with operations would enjoy it. Questions like "why is IT Change Management important" and "how do we prevent people from making mindless changes in production on a Friday afternoon". If you know this already, so far this book is nothing but a "good story about work" - if anybody ever miss this part of life.

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#66

Post by stavros »

xtracto wrote: post #61
rwmj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How/where did you find former CTOs to talk to?

The slack community in https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/ has a pretty good number of CTOs and other leaders.

This looks interesting, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#67

Post by FourthProtocol »

I'm somewhat surprised that strategy is only mentioned once (at time of writing). Strategy is vital for any leadership role. Sun Tsu is a classic, but can be difficult to assimilate. There are many resources on Wikipedia.

Often overlooked is dealing with power and politics (https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Work/Politics.aspx)

Keeping up to date on tech also important, especially at the tech lead/architecture level (https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Work/Mentoring.aspx).

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#68

Post by leetrout »

skrebbel wrote: post #60
ysavir wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the parent comment means only code, never learn. I think their intention was to not worry too much about the "CTO" title and instead focus on building the product at hand.

Yep. When building a startup you’ll find a lot of well-meaning people (in books or in person) who really do nothing but distract you. YC got it right, you should make something people want. Everything that’s not either making something or finding out what people want is just going to slow you down.

Too reductionist.

You must "sharpen the saw".

This takes many forms including adequate learning / training for self improvement as well as investment in your tooling that will pay dividends on delivering faster or with higher throughput.

These are second and third system effects that require intention to monitor or measure but the effect is real.

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#69

Post by liquidpele »

fullstackchris wrote: post #49
endymi0n wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And honestly, pre product-market fit my advice would be not even coding, but iterating in an extremely scrappy way (read: Google Sheets, Jupyter Notebooks, no-/low code, handwritten invoices) until you have people paying for your product and not churning after the first month. Everything else comes secondary. For every company that didn‘t manage to scale their tech and teams fast enough, there‘s 100 that die by „buil…

this is perfect advice which i can't agree with enough. that is unless the founders insist on a flawless UI... then you are in for a world of pain never understood why teams of literally 1 or 2 devs are always forced to try attempt to acheive the visual quality of apps like instagram, whatsapp, etc

> never understood why teams of literally 1 or 2 devs are always forced to try attempt to acheive the visual quality of apps like instagram, whatsapp, etc

For the same reason those kinds of places have more managers than workers… it’s a vanity project.

Re: Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?

#70

Post by ajb »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #34

I've been a CTO a couple of times (VMware, startup), I don't think I'm a good one (I am better as an individual contributor, rather than as a manager), but I have one piece of advice for you: ignore books, or use them as secondary source of truth. You should instead TALK to long-time or former CTOs and ask them for advice. You won't find that advice in any book. It's invaluable.

On that subject, Someone I knew used to use the bartech cto network. But I'm not sure if it still exists, as I now can't find any trace of bartech online. There is this page: https://discourse.bartechcto.net/login but it seems to be invite only.
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