Yonatan Striem-Amit in InfoWorld: Rising from the coding ranks to become a CTO

Rising from the ranks of script kiddie to CTO requires more than excelling at coding. A passion for technology is a requirement, but being a CTO requires blending technical skills with business acumen.

Besides an organization’s software developers, most likely no one at a company cares how elegant your algorithm is. Potential customers probably aren’t asking sales representatives about your product’s code. But what your sales prospects and co-workers do care about is how that algorithm impacts your business. Being a CTO means you understand how to use technology to help your company build a product.

CTOs use technology to help the business improve its products

Being a CTO means you no longer create a product simply because it’s cool or the technology it uses is trendy. As a CTO, you’re responsible for building software that your customer needs and for developing a product and technology with the mindset of its role of t in the company’s overall business. Getting into this mindset can be challenging for developers. After all, developers are not typically taught to think of how their work helps the bottom line or leads to products that win over customers.

You can read the entire column on InfoWorld's website.