I was promoted to CTO in my late twenties, and while it is common to see young CTOs leading startups these days, it was unusual in the ‘90s. I was far less experienced back then, and still developing my business acumen. While I was a strong software developer, it wasn’t my architecture and coding skills that helped me transition to a C-level role.
Of all the technical skills I had back then, my devops skills were the most critical. Of course, we didn’t call it devops, as the term hadn’t been invented yet. We didn’t yet have CI/CD pipelines or infrastructure-as-code capabilities. Nonetheless, I automated our builds, scripted the deployments, standardized infrastructure configurations, and monitored systems performance.
Developing that scaffolding enabled our development teams to focus on building and testing applications while operations managed infrastructure improvements. With automation in place and a team focused on the technology, I was able to focus on higher-level tasks such as understanding customer needs, partnering with product managers, learning marketing objectives, and learning about sales operations. When our CTO left for another opportunity, I was given the chance to step into the leadership role.
